In Destiny, the newest video game from the creators of the blockbuster Halo franchise, players take the role of a “guardian,” a being with other-worldly powers tasked with protecting the last human city.
“You are Earth’s last hope,” a voice says in a June trailer for the game. “If you fail, everything you know – everything humans have ever known – will be gone forever.”
While nowhere near as dramatic, the stakes are similarly high for Bungie, which rose to fame in the gaming community through its Halo series of sci-fi shooters, and publisher Activision Blizzard, which has committed half a billion dollars over the next decade to the Destiny project – a game that hits store shelves Tuesday.
Destiny is similar to Halo on its face: There’s eerie music, visions of space, a tale of human civilization struggling to regain its footing in a distant future, a struggle between good and evil. They’re both epic in their ambition, with a weighty and detailed story for the player to follow. They’re both shooting games.
What’s different is scope. With Destiny, Bungie is attempting to create a living video game world that many players can use to interact with one another and progress through the title’s story. These massive games, such as Activision’s own World of Warcraft, are rare beasts in the video game industry: Few of these types of games have found similar success to Halo, a multibillion dollar franchise ranging from books to toys and more, has sold more than 50 million copies since the first game debuted in 2001.
Bungie’s vision of bringing a large and complex world to life in the game is part of what attracted Tabesh Ataie, a 21-year-old chemical engineering student in Berkeley, Calif., to pre-order the title before it even hit store shelves. He said he’s always been a fan of Bungie’s work, and enjoys in particular these large and intricate titles.
“I love any video game with a good storyline,” he said.
He’s not alone. Destiny is the most pre-ordered new game in history. It has also topped weekly order tracking surveys by industry watcher VGChartz for an almost uninterrupted six months. When it wasn’t the most popular, it was No. 2.
It was a key piece of Sony’s E3 presentation in June, with the Japanese electronics giant willing to create a specific colorized version of its $400 PlayStation 4 video game console to commemorate the game’s launch (the bundle with the game costs $450). Consumers can buy their copy of the title starting at $60 apiece.
Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, estimates the game could sell as many as 10 million units this year, and 5 million units next year, if it gets high praise from reviewers. That would come in lower than Grand Theft Auto V, which rung up 29 million units in its first six weeks on the market, cementing it as the fastest selling game of all time.
Even then, Destiny could be the next billion dollar franchise.
Read the full piece at CNET:
http://www.cnet.com/news/become-legend-ambitious-destiny-aims-for-gaming-superstar-status/