From the desk of shocking news that’ll thrill fans comes this tidbit from Bungie Studios: Going forward, it’s ditching Activision and acting as its own publisher on the Destiny games.
Bungie revealed the shocking news in a short press release earlier this afternoon, and it’s being awfully straightforward. The studio, who developed Microsoft’s Halogames and made them the phenomenon they are, thinks that it is ready to act as the sole company responsible for Destinygoing forward. The company even titled its news post “Our Destiny.”
“We have enjoyed a successful eight-year run and would like to thank Activision for their partnership on Destiny,” a passage in today’s press release reads. The company plans to share more about the transition soon.
Until then, we’re forced to speculate about what this could mean for one of gaming’s biggest franchises. Bungie began developing Destiny after it broke free from Microsoft Game Studios. Destiny, the first game, and Destiny 2 have sold millions of copies, so on the surface it’s hard to see why Activision and Bungie are going their separate ways.
Look a bit closer and the divorce makes more sense. Bungie says that Activision plans to focus more on the games it develops for one thing. To me, that sounds like there may have been some friction between the two companies but I’m just speculating. Certainly, going on an earnings call and saying Destiny 2’s latest expansion “failed to re-engage core fans” and noting its “underperformance” wouldn’t have helped things in this scenario. That’s exactly what Activision did, according to PC Gamer.
Second, there’s a lot of online, always-evolving games that compete for or will compete for the spare time of players everywhere. Since we published our Destiny 2 review, I’ve stopped playing and skipped the add-on content to go back to The Division, for example. It has a sequel coming in March. There’s also Bioware’s Anthem on the horizon. In fact, more and more games are borrowing from the always-fresh playbook that Destiny pioneered.
