Activision Tempts Fate By Saying ‘Destiny’ Will Be The New ‘Call Of Duty’

We don’t want to say Bobby Kotick might be overhyping Destiny just a wee bit, but it’s pretty clear the guy is enthusiastic about it. To the point where he’s clearly thinking he’s got the next Call of Duty on his hands.

True, this came from an earnings call, and earnings calls are the province of hype. But read this transcript of the call conducted yesterday, courtesy of Seeking Alpha, and wonder if maybe the team at Bungie aren’t sweating slightly:

In 2014, Activision Publishing plans to release new games based on Call of Duty and Skylanders, as well as Destiny, our new game from Bungie, which has the potential to be our next billion dollar franchise.

Destiny delivers a groundbreaking new universe, and it capitalizes on advances in connectivity to create an innovative shared world action experience. We expect that Destiny will become the best selling new video game IP in history when it launches across Xbox and PlayStation consoles on September 9.

That’s a ballsier statement than you might think. Currently, the “best selling new video game IP in history” that isn’t a pack-in is Nintendogs, with 23.94 million, according to the all-mighty Wikipedia. That’s certainly a goal Destiny can reach, mind you, but we can see a few problems.

First, it’s an always-online game. Back when the Xbox One was a product of Microsoft deciding everybody would take their restrictive console and like it, that wasn’t a problem. Now? It is. What’s the offline experience going to be like?

Secondly, it just doesn’t really feel like that kind of game. Again, looking at the list of best-selling games, it’s fairly instructive that the list is dominated by one company: Nintendo. They own eight of the top ten, and twenty-one of the top thirty. Kotick isn’t really arguing his franchise is the next Call of Duty so much as he’s arguing it’s the next Grand Theft Auto.

Finally, it’s just really not that distinct, as a game. It looks beautiful and by all accounts plays like butter; we don’t really expect any less from Bungie, and something is going to have to go hideously wrong for Destiny not to be an enormous success. But it’s got no real story hook and its mechanics are all oddly abstract; play the game a lot and something weird will happen thanks to all the people playing the game! If you don’t follow video games, it’s going to look like another generic SF shooter.

But, hey, we’re not Activision. Maybe they know something we don’t. Or maybe they’re just hoping this will keep the good times rolling.

via Seeking Alpha

×