In Destiny 2, there is a good reason why the release was moved forward.
During E3 2017, there was surprising news about Destiny 2: The release date, which was originally set for September 8, was moved – to September 6. So Destiny 2 now releases two days earlier on PS4 and Xbox One.
In the gaming industry, it is not unusual for a release to be delayed, as various problems can arise. However, it is rather curious for the launch of a major title like Destiny 2 to be moved forward.
Wednesday is better than Friday – at least for the servers
Game Director Luke Smith gave an answer in an interview with Gamesradar about why they chose this unusual step. The reason is that too many people play video games on weekends.
According to Smith, the past has shown that their games have the highest number of concurrent players on Saturdays during the launch week. If Destiny 2 were to release on a Friday (September 8), it would pose a risk for the servers and the tech team.
It is simply not a good idea to release the game right before the day when the most activity usually occurs – and to hope that the servers hold up.
For if the servers were to crash on a Saturday, Smith said, “it could get very ugly.”
By moving the release to a Wednesday (September 6), they have a bit more time to gather data and ease the pressure on the server team. If the launch becomes larger than expected, adjustments can still be made. This would also benefit the fans.
We have already reported that Bungie is reactivating the queues to manage the server demand. For the beta and during the launch days of Destiny 2, Bungie expects that you will occasionally find yourself in a queue when you want to log in. However, once you are logged in, you should not have to worry about queues when starting an activity.
More information about the queues can be found here.
