Grossing more than $325 million worldwide in its first five days on shelves, Bungie’s long-anticipated, massively multiplayer shooter Destiny is the best-selling new video game franchise launch of all time. That’s good news for publisher Activision, for which the series is a reported $500 million investment. According to the developer, fans have already logged more than 100 million hours of online play in the first week, putting Destiny on par with the much more established Call of Duty games.
Destiny builds on Bungie’s legacy as creator of the genre-defining first-person shooter Halo: Combat Evolved by taking it to a massive new scale, injecting elements of MMORPGs like level/gear progression, public hubs, community events, instanced dungeons, and high-level raids. While it certainly stumbles a little in multiple respects, the core gameplay is very gratifying, and serves as a solid foundation for something that could become truly great in time.
“This is just the beginning,” said Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg in the publisher announcement touting the sales success. “Destiny is a platform that will grow and evolve and we will continue to work closely with our partners at Bungie to bring a long line of new experiences and content to life in the game.”
In Destiny you are one of humanity’s Guardians–elite warriors tasked with protecting the last city on Earth from alien incursion while seeking to reclaim mankind’s lost golden age in the stars. Check out our review and starter guide if you want to join the fight.
