According to Activision, Bungie’s science fiction shooter, Destiny 2, is currently not performing as well as the video game publisher would have hoped.
Earlier this year, Activision’s Q2 2018 investor call intentionally left out Destiny 2 from the video game publisher’s list of accomplishments, indicating that the science fiction shooter’s sales had been struggling ever since the base game launched back in 2017. Now, it looks as if Activision is being even more blunt about the matter, as the company has said that sales for the action-RPG have not met its expectations.
According to a statement made by Activison COO Coddy Johnson during the publisher’s most recent earnings call, Destiny 2 has not yet seen players’ “full core” re-engagement with the game following the launch of its latest expansion, Forsaken. More specifically, the company said, “Some of our other franchises like Destiny are not performing as well as we’d like.” However, no hard data was shared during the call to show the game’s “under-performance against expectations to date”.
All of this may not come as much of a surprise to many, with recent signs such as Destiny 2‘s base game going free on PC for a limited time connoting poor sales for the title, as Activision certainly wants this particular strategy to result in boosted revenue from D2‘s DLC. It’s worth noting that the title managed to top digital console sales for September 2018 when the base content became free for PlayStation Plus subscribers for the month, but apparently that wasn’t enough to sate Activision.
Taking everything into consideration, with Season 4 coming to a close soon, it will be interesting to see what direction Bungie intends to take Destiny 2 in order to facilitate better sales and increase player engagement in order to try and meet Activision’s expectations. For sake of the fans and the franchise itself, hopefully the studio will find a way to cater to a much larger audience of both hardcore and casual players alike so as to keep the game alive and well for the foreseeable future.
Destiny 2 is available now for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
