Activision must be happy with developer Bungie.
The studio’s sci-fi shooter Destiny sold millions and now has 9.5 million registered players. The publisher reiterated that Destiny is the largest launch ever for a new game franchise — although it did not share how many copies it sold. Regardless, it’s performing better than the previous best-selling new franchise, Ubisoft’s open-world hacking game Watch Dogs. Destiny was a huge contributor to helping Activision rake in a record third quarter in terms of revenue.
Activision reported the results for its third quarter today, and the company crushed Wall Street’s expectations. Destiny can take the most credit for that, along with some of Activision’s other hits like World of Warcraft.
This all shows how adroit Activision is at creating massive buzz for its new releases. That’s something that has served the company well for its Call of Duty franchise, and now the publisher has two gigantic shooting franchises that will likely help it have two billion-dollar quarters in a row.
Destiny is also evidence that gamers are starving for new experiences on their new machines. While Destiny is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, it sold much better on the newer devices, according to industry-tracking group NPD.