Earlier this year it was revealed that Destiny, Bungie’s latest video game had a budget of about $500 million. This means that a substantial amount of money went into development as well as marketing. This means any commercials, magazine ads, billboards, and the like would all have come from this. It certainly helped that the open beta on the systems also did the game favors by way of word of mouth.
It would appear that the budget was put to good use.
Activision and Gamestop both confirmed that Destiny is the most preordered PlayStation 3/4 and Xbox 360/One game in history. Considering how much hype has gone into a brand-new IP, the game seems to have charged the hopes of gamers. I could see why Bungie would opt not to compare the game to entries in the massively-multiplayer-online-roleplaying-game genre; doing so invites comparison to the juggernauts in the room, like World of Warcraft, and even it’s less-successful competitors. However, Bungie is also keeping this experience on consoles, which isn’t exactly new, but still a shallow territory. Bungie seeks to establish a gaming population on consoles that franchises like M.A.G. have tried to forge. If Bungie can work their magic on Destiny, the game may prove to establish the console market as ripe ground for console-centric MMOs.
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