Destiny has become the biggest ever launch of a new video game series in the UK, according to official sales monitor, Chart-Track.
Launched on Tuesday, the “shared world” online shooter charted straight at number one in the UK all-formats game chart, knocking Ubisoft cyberpunk thriller Watch Dogs off the top.
Activision has also claimed in a press release that the title is the global games industry’s biggest ever franchise launch. The publisher has sold $500m worth of copies through to retailers and console bundles – it is not yet known how many copies have actually been bought by consumers. To be the most successful new IP launch, it will have to have shifted more stock than previous record holder Watch Dogs, which sold 4m units in its first week, according to Ubisoft.
Chart-Track also released a breakdown of UK sales data between the four machines the game is available on: PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One:
PlayStation 4: 46% share
Xbox One: 36%
Xbox 360: 14%
PS3: 4%
The figures show a 50/50 split between Xbox and PlayStation platforms, despite a deal by Sony to ensure the PS3/PS4 versions of the game dominated pre-release advertising.
The game has also attracted mixed reviews from the gaming press, with an average score of 75% on the influential reviews aggregation site, Metacritic. Scores of 6/10 from popular sites, Gamespot, Polygon, The Escapist and Giant Bomb have aligned closely with a current average user score of 6.4/10.
Critics have derided the overly solemn narrative, limited environments and conventional game mechanics. However, there has also been praise for the well-executed collaborative gameplay, which allows players to take on story missions together. New downloadable content will start to arrive in December.
Developed by Bungie, the studio behind the Halo series of Xbox shooters, the game is the result of a 10-year publishing deal with Activision, and has seen significant investment. At a talk in May, the publisher’s CEO Bobby Kotick claimed to have committed $500m to the game – although it’s likely he meant that figure as an investment over the next ten years rather than an initial outlay.
Whatever the specifics of the figure, if sales get close to the retail sell-through figure Activision has publicised, the company – which already boasts $2bn franchises in the form of Call of Duty and Skylanders – could well break even within one month.
