Activision is rubbing its hands together: Destiny 2 is going to be a super hit. Feedback from the Destiny 2 Beta has been overwhelmingly positive, and more players have played the Destiny 2 Beta than the one for Destiny 1. A lot of DLCs for Destiny 2 have already been sold.
Activision presented its quarterly report yesterday. On the sidelines, there were some remarks about Destiny 2. From Activision’s perspective, things couldn’t be going better.
Activision man Eric Hirshberg says:
- There are a lot of positive signals regarding Destiny 2
- Activision has “enormous faith” in the title
- They have received “almost entirely” positive feedback about the Destiny 2 Beta, from both the press and the fans
Many pre-order customers have bought the season pass as well
- Destiny 2 will have an even broader target audience than Destiny 1 – it is being released on PC, localized for even more countries, partnering with Blizzard to utilize Battle.net
- The pre-orders for Destiny 2 are very strong, and an “overwhelmingly large percentage” opted for the premium version with the season pass. They have thus already purchased the first two DLCs for Destiny 2 .
Expansions as important as the base game
- Activision plans multiple content expansions for Destiny 2 and they are extremely important, likely the most important aspect overall. “Follow-up content” is just as important as the main game.
- Activision wants to satisfy the fans’ hunger for more content. They did not succeed in doing this with Destiny 1. Now Vicarious Visions and High Moon Studios will work alongside Bungie on Destiny 2. Activision has expanded its developer arsenal to meet content demand.
My MMO thinks: The servers could have potentially been ablaze, and marauding hordes of Destiny fans could have been rampaging through Seattle, and Activision would still have received “only positive signals”. The Destiny 2 Beta was certainly no catastrophe, but it was “uniformly well-received by fans and the press” – in our filter bubble, this was not the case. Rather, the beta was controversial – especially the decision to slow down PvP.
Nevertheless, it is evident that Activision has clearly received the signal “Give us more content” from Destiny 1. Now it remains to be seen if they will implement it. High Moon Studio is said to have been working on Destiny for 2 years – we reported on this in May 2015. We do not know what they are doing and whether it will truly reach the quality of Bungie’s A-Team. This will be a central question in the coming months.
Clearly, Destiny 2 has a lot of expectations from Destiny 1. Many people are looking forward to the game and have “blindly pre-ordered.” Hopefully, Destiny 2 can also meet these expectations. However, for most of these casual players, a “good story” and great PvE content in Destiny 2 will be more important than whether PvP has slowed down.
The next bite of Destiny 2 will be given to players with the PC Beta in a few weeks. The PC Beta is expected to be larger and better than the PS4/Xbox One Beta:
Destiny 2: PC players will get a better beta – extra map & improvements
