CoD, Activision, and Destiny (Gaming)

by Schooly D, TSD Gaming Condo, TX, Sunday, December 01, 2013, 11:42 (4009 days ago)

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/11/30/activision-may-soon-lose-the-call-of-duty-cash-cow.aspx

Couple of things:

1. If Destiny has a stellar launch and CoD: Ghosts continues to underperform (current figures are not looking good), could we see a switch such that Destiny gets the coveted Fall release slot and CoD shifts to Spring?

2. The article gets something wrong: CoD titles are released every year, but they have two years of development since there are two developers, Treyarch and IW, that alternate games.

but since that's the case...

3. What is the danger for Bungie here, given that Bungie will ostensibly be on the same two-year cycle (which the article claims caused stagnation with CoD) but will, additionally, be developing DLC expansions in the off years? If the development of the expansion doesn't interfere with the development of the next game, will it be a substantial release? If the expansion is substantial enough to affect the next game's release, how concerning is that given it's eating into an already brief, CoD-ish 2-year cycle?

I remember when news of the Bungie-Activision contract got out, the opinion of a lot of people in the b.org community was that Bungie made out like bandits, or that it was at least a win-win: Bungie gets ACTV's money and platform while retaining "full creative control" or whatever the phrase was. What if that calculus was wrong? What if the long game is a decisive win for ACTV and loss for BNG, as BNG is forced to pump out Destiny titles on an even more abbreviated schedule than CoD which has now been driven into the ground?

Related Q1: how important is "full creative control" when you're forced to output feature games on what amounts to a 1.5-year dev cycle? How easy is it to break new ground each time?

Related Q2: does releasing Destiny onto not just different platforms, but different generations, sound like something Bungie would want to do? Or does it sound like something ordered at the behest of a publisher? As above, how does this constraint affect "full creative control?"