Destiny 2 did not meet Activision's "commercial expectations."

Article by IGN. A little surprised there hasn't been a thread on this yet.

Anyway, as the title said, Destiny 2 did not rake in as much money as Activision would have liked - that presumably include sales of base game, expansions and microtransactions. Certainly explains why they're giving the base game away on PC right now.

No real surprise for me. After the sky-high hype for the first game, there was always going to be a let-down for the sequel. Worse yet, I remember following the news leading up to the launch and seeing nothing but talks about incremental improvements over Destiny 1 - things I thought could have been done through patches or expansion packs instead of a full sequel. It all just didn't sound very exciting or hype-worthy at all. Some post-launch controversies over monetization also didn't help.

And now that I've played it myself, I've concluded that it's just an MMO-ified Borderlands meets Call of Duty with less personality. Solid, but all too familiar, and not much really going for it. My desire to keep playing was already eroding even before today. Now that both Fortuna for Warframe AND Vampire Coast for Total War: Warhammer II have dropped on the same day (FML), my desire has dropped to near zero.

They say they are reviewing ways to "re-engage" with players. It would be mildly fascinating to see what they'll do, at least. I heard Forsaken improves it by a lot. Maybe I'll pick it up once it gets a discount - if I have some spare cash. Maybe. I'm just really that dispassionate about it.

Forsaken is basically Destiny 3. It is not even an expansion. They sold it like a base game but said it was an "expansion".

A souless product all round.

Bungie were one time lucky in the early days of console shooters.

They supremely boned the vanilla launch of this game. They knew gamers biggest concern with D1 was that it was starved for content and they went and did the same damn thing with the next game all while promising that isn't what they were going to do. The gear grind was also completely mad. I found myself not caring about any of it after like my second attempt at the Leviathan with some friends.

From what I hear, curse of osiris was a pitiful expansion and the second expansion was the apology tour that actually fixed shit. Like, who pays for that much dlc just to get something that is coherent? Oh, right, the target Activision stooge.

Played it on PC a bit, and frankly yea. It's not much of a MMO to be honest. It feels like a dota shooter but without a steady team to do stuff. Maybe this changes once you hit level 60 or whatever max level is. Frankly can't be bothered to continue playing. Doing crappy kill quests alone is horrible boring.

I played the game for about 2 hours on my PS4 with the PS plus free thing. Honestly, I couldn't get into it. Felt so generic and a waste of time with so many other superior shooters out there. I honestly don't understand how Bungie, such a talented team have pretty much launched 2 boring games in arrow.

Activision’s expectations for D2 were for it to fall somewhere in the same universe as GTAV. I put all the blame at Bungie’s feet, the game is horrendously unbalanced in all of its competitive modes and a slog with very little story content worth caring for.

That said, the activities+rewards blueprint they’ve implemented in Forsaken is a thing of beauty.

That's good. Crap games shouldn't be rewarded.

Played some now that it's free and it's just as braindead and boring as I thought. When FPSs released in the 90's were more varied and better designed than a game released in 2017...

Bungie is a sad, sad developer. And Activision is just all around shit. The game they made together turned out to be a hollow piece of shit, go figure.

Thats why they are giving it away for free on PC, to recoup what they can on micro-transactions.

Good, Craptivision can crash and burn for all I care, and Bungie sold their soul to the devil and knew what they were getting into, and have only stained their reputation and still have plenty more years for Craptivision to milk them dry creatively lol.

#longlivebizzarecreations

Destiny is probably the best shooter on consoles in my opinion. Nothing plays quite as well as it does. The gunplay is fantastic.

It's just a shame about all the business crap that surrounds it and taints it.

To be fair we could draw similar parallels with Play ground games selling themselves out to MS. Destiny has been no more egregious with it's DLC and MT's than the Forza series over the last decade.

Seems to be a consistent problem with AAA gaming. No matter how many copies sold, or millions of zillions of dollars are made in profit, it's somehow never enough to keep the shareholders and CEO's happy. How soon until this toxic business mentality leads to another industry crash I wonder?

WTF are you on about?

Where did I mention MT or DLC, and your parallels are shit, because one developer is flourishing while the other was shut because Craptivision made them make a James Bond game that tanked, that's like MS asking T10 to make the next Halo game.

This is twice you have tried to pick an argument with me, and tried using Forza as your bait and twice you have failed, maybe you should learn from that.

@i_p_daily: My apologies, I read you're post early this morning and didn't read it properly. I wasn't trying to start a fight. Sorry.

Almost every MMO other than World of Warcraft has ultimately failed. And they usually follow a similar pattern. They make them free to play. Then after a few years they shut down the servers. I actually wish companies would stop trying to make these games as most have no idea how to do it, and WoW was more a weird lightning in a bottle phenomenon that would be hard to replicate.

I used to be a big Destiny fan, even when everyone was shitting on it but I cant defend the clear greediness that plagues the series. I've moved since then to Warframe to have my loot fix. I may buy Destiny 2 when its a complete package for the lore alone but until then I hope Activision and Bungie crash and burn with their anti-consumer practices.

If Destiny was just a bog standard FPS without any of the MMO crap it would of been much better.

Ebil Microsoft hates gamers. They opress game devs into making GaaS, DLC, lootbox microtransaction trash. Activision, come save us!!!

Bungie should sell the IP to Activision, and/or walk away from the partnership.

that fact they gave it away on PC is telling.

also it was not in the top 10 of PS4 lifteme sales list.

Good.

They need to go back home to a soft place with micro.

I called it. People were like "Oh it's so nice of them to give Destiny 2 out for free!" and I was all "Nah, they're not doing it for free; they're doing it to sell more DLC because the base game is not selling anymore."

In an ideal world, they would identify this issue for what it is: players are tired of dull, pointless loot fests and want games of actual, intangible substance. But, as this is not an ideal world, they will probably blame the consumer in whatever form they can, and in a few months some officer (either at Activision or Bungie) will leave, floating gently down with a golden parachute.

Destiny 2 is, objectively, a good game: its controls are tight, the visuals are good, the music is epic. But the fact remains that it is boring grind and the only reason people play is because of the gambling mechanic of "insert time, receive loot" and hoping for something incredible.

And this just goes to show you what is wrong with "AAA" gaming to begin with: they have these preposterously large budgets to develop games with and they still can't make enough money to recoup their expenses despite selling millions of copies.

When will they learn that less is more, and more is too much.

Of course. The game is shite; it was dying and it they didn't get enough DLC sales. It was pretty obvious.

Isnt it ironic how most of the companies complaining that their games aren't 'profitable enough' are all the really huge companies making all the money anyway.

Maybe its just me.

Why do small content patches cost $35 in Destiny2, which also has lootboxes, while they are free in Overwatch?

$35? lol, really?

I like Destiny 2 and all, I've had fun with it, but they deserve for their bottom line to suffer. You don't charge $60 for a base game, $40 for a "season pass" (which is just 2 expansions bundled together at no discount), then fix all the problems with another $40 expansion, and then reach your hand out for another $30 "annual pass", the content of which remains unclear. Just what the hell, man.

Meanwhile all content in Overwatch so far has been 100% free.

I don't know how Bungie gets away with this lol. It costs almost as much as a subscription MMO in the end, but with far less content.

Which is why they were giving it away for free on Battlenet and hoping people would pour some money into their microtransactions.

Their updates cost too much, the only value in getting them is if you hadn't played it and wanna get caught up, shit expansion prices for early adopters.

@mrbojangles25: I think it shows that there is a very real thirst for a WoW-scale mmofps but as long as they insist on using the retail minus subscription commercial model as a crutch to not go all in with actual mmo-sized content, it is doomed to fall painfully short.

Or, to put it another way, as long as they insist on marketing these games like an mmo type of investment to potential players, but nickel and dime any real substantive content, gamers will exit stage and only come back when the whole enchilada is 20 bucks. I think you are half right. They are doing all but going actually big, though. They sell small as big. Its actually a shame.

These games could be very special, but they act like they are in direct competition with the crowded mmorpg market rather than striking out on their own. The content at launch always sucks, and then they look like jerks asking people to stay engaged by paying for expansions that may or may not be less fun than setting $40 on fire while holding it. As sure as there will be a sun and a moon, Anthem will try dong this too, and gamers will take it to the shed even more quickly because Destiny got their hopes up again and again already.

Well neither did the game meet the expectations of gamer's... I stopped playing it after the first 10-15 hours. I just got bored real quick.

All good I like the banter, it keeps this place fun. I just found your comparison off, not like you boycie you're usually on the ball lol.

EDIT: Just read my last post to you which was after a long days work, and I came across as a bit of an arsehole my bad lol.

@DragonfireXZ95: Its not dying lol, there's still a ton of people playing it.

On PC? Have the numbers?

I played both Destiny 1 and 2. I found both games forgettable .

I feel they would have been more enjoyable if they had of made they single player games.

I'm guessing Activision is trying to make WoW for the FPS market.

Mehh bought the game plus the two first expansions on sale for 30 euro and was quite happy about it! It’s a quite solid FPS, but haven’t really gotten into the multiplayer part of it since it requires you to find your own group...

Anyway played it as a single player and quite enjoyed it but have zero interest in paying 40 euro for a new short expansion!

@DragonfireXZ95: I dont know PC numbers, consoles are still pretty high. Other then a very select few do PC fps ever keep good numbers?

Not surprising at all. I spent many hours in destiny 1 and held out hope it would turn into an amazing platform but Bungie continually let me down. No raid matchmaking, no custom matches, made past raids useless. The game really needed content and they would basically destroy the older content. Then they release destiny 2 where your progress doesn’t transfer despite it still playing exactly like destiny 1, lol.

Now my only shred of misplaced hope for a good shoot n’ loot is Borderlands dlc or Anthem. *cries*

That's fascinating to me. I'd love to hear more about this. I'm enjoying Destiny 2 a whole lot more than I had anticipated.

Bungie and id Software (Carmack, Doom, etc) were founded on the exact same year (1991). You can't be one time lucky in 2001 and somehow have a company that launched a decade earlier.

Like they caught lighning in a bottle with Destiny 1 and were kind luck the fanbase played that game for a long as they did. But honestly to get to the World of Warcraft level of MMO these days takes literal years like WoW did. Like you need a health fan base plus a steady stream of new content and level and WoW did both in spades. So yeah when you try and take the shortcut like Activision did people saw through it. "Light" levels aka some bullshit grind levels smh.

1 time lucky as a massive hit.

Halo has run its course. taking 5+ years, 100-200 million budget to create a tiny Halo Clone with World of Warcraft elements is shockingly bad. Then releasing full price sequal + expensive DLC and still have 90% of the same recycled enemies and materials used in the previous game...

Destiny is terrible.

This post actually got me to re-install Destiny 2 and give it another go.

Still boring.

Anyone play it on PC and have a clan I can join? I imagine it's more fun with people.

Falling short of expectations doesn't mean it didn't show profit.

Played the campaign on the PS4 when it was free - and I thought it was pretty fun. Makes me interested to see if Forsaken also has a good campaign.

@madrocketeer: No surprise Destiny 2 did not meet sales expectations

The game is ok but after about 2 hours you are pretty much done and it lacks a clear direction,

Good, maybe they will make something not shit next time.