Activision expects Destiny to be best-selling new IP ever
Publisher sets the bar for Bungie's next game, switches to making Call of Duty on three-year development cycle
Activision Blizzard has been building expectations for Bungie's upcoming Destiny for a while, but CEO Bobby Kotick raised the bar a little higher today in a post-earnings conference call.
"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," Kotick told investors.
Kotick added that the game has the potential to be Activision's next billion-dollar franchise, while Activision Publishing president and CEO Eric Hirshberg noted that the shooter is on track to become the most preordered new IP ever.
With the company's aspiring blockbuster shooter franchise thus hyped, Hirshberg also provided an update on how Activision will handle its existing blockbuster shooter franchise. Starting with this year's Call of Duty, Activision is moving to a three-year development cycle on the series. That will allow the development teams more time to innovate and polish, Hirshberg said, as well as giving them more time to focus on lucrative DLC and "micro-DLC" offerings.
To accommodate the longer development cycles while maintaining an annual release schedule for the franchise, Activision is supplementing Treyarch and Infinity Ward by adding a third full-time studio to the series. Development on this year's Call of Duty will be led by Sledgehammer Games, which previously assisted on Modern Warfare 3.