In the contract. Here's some other stuff. (Destiny)

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Saturday, January 23, 2016, 05:16 (3322 days ago) @ electricpirate

There's been a lot of salt recently on reddit and other forums to the tune of "looks like Destiny 2 isn't happening this year." This sentiment (that it's not happening) seemed to just morph out of thin air these past couple of weeks. Before then, i had never seen any assumptions that it would happen.

When is the last time that bungie announced a new title (not expansion) in the same calendar year as release? I didn't follow Bungie during their Mac days, so I don't know. They definitely haven't done that with console releases.

Halo 1 - 1999, released 2001
Halo 2 - 2002, 2004
Halo 3 - 2006, 2007
ODST - 2008, 2009
Reach - 2009, 2010
Destiny- 2013, 2014

Unless they change their MO, I had personally assumed that a Destiny 2 announcement would come this year, with a 2017 release date. If Destiny is supposed to support a 10-year cycle, i would assume that major releases would be more than 2 years apart, otherwise we'd be looking at "Destiny 5" in ten years.

It came from 2 places.

1. the original contract that came out as part of the infinityward lawsuit. That contract specified alternating year full title releases/ large expansion packs (like TTK).

My copy of the contract specifies the "tentative" schedule in an appendix, but I don't have it, and neither do the other "leaked" sources I've seen. It mentions "Destiny Game #2" and "Destiny Game #3" and even "Destiny Game #4" as well as "Comet #2" and "Comet #3" and "Comet #4" but as hypotheticals, as indicated by the phrase "as applicable" when referring to them. Beyond the games specified in the contract, Activision has right of first negotiation on further titles.

The document describes the full releases as games, the major expansions as Comets, and smaller "DLC releases" as well as Conversions (presumably, anything for platforms other than PS3/4 and Xbox 360/Xbox One, referred to in this document as Xbox 720-- in other words, Windows PCs.

The initial tentative schedule was like this:

Destiny 1 Fall 2013
Destiny 2 Fall 2015
Destiny 3 Fall 2017
Destiny 4 Fall 2019

Since Destiny slipped a year, it would look like this:

Destiny 1 Fall 2014
Destiny 2 Fall 2016
Destiny 3 Fall 2018
Destiny 4 Fall 2020

So that's where people are getting their Fall 2016 expectation from.

The Comet releases were scheduled for the in-between years:

Comet 1 Fall 2014
Comet 2 Fall 2016
Comet 3 Fall 2018
Comet 4 Fall 2020

Again, to compensate for the one-year slip, we'd get:

Comet 1 Fall 2015
Comet 2 Fall 2017
Comet 3 Fall 2019
Comet 4 Fall 2021

So far that makes sense if The Taken King is Comet 1, which is pretty much what everybody considers it to be. That would make Dark Below and House of Wolves the other two DLC releases, with two more of those expected to come before Destiny 2.

However, this contract was old even when it was leaked, and it's possible that this was revised even before Destiny 1's release slipped a year, and was altered further when DLC plans changed.

There's also some weird stuff where at the top of the page it says Destiny 1 should be out Fall 2013, but then specifies that the PS3 version of Destiny 1 was expected out in Fall 2014. So perhaps the slip was already anticipated in this draft, but was only to affect Sony platform(s), or else parts of the contract were revised to reflect the new schedule, but others were not.

There is some other choice stuff in there, too, though. Like this:

Activision and Licensor shall mutually agree upon a budget to support the continuing operation of the
Products for a period of three (3) years following the commercial release of Comet #4 ("Support Term").

So there you have it. According to this, Activision is obligated to fund Bungie's continued operation of Destiny until Fall 2024.

Think my Xbox will last that long?

Also, Bungie has to finish the 2nd full Destiny title and make $375M in revenue before they can work on Marathon. So Tess Everis is actually running the Marathon kickstarter.

Final note, with relevance to the later dispute between Martin O'Donnell, Bungie, and Activision: Under Section 7.1 paragraph xii, Bungie was obligated to:

delivering Product art and style bible (and appropriate updates thereto) (which such style bible
shall be subject to the approval of Activision, such approval not to be unreasonably withheld) and
other w i se providing Activision staff (and/or its designated agencies) with reasonable and regular
access to and review of subject matter experts, game assets and other related materials such that
Activsion is sufficiently able to create and generate customary (i.e., consistent with other AAA
interactive software entertainment products published by Activision) events, marketing, advertising,
promotional and packaging materials for the Products;

The indication here is that control of "events, marketing, advertising, promotional and packaging materials for the Products" rested with Activision, with Bungie obligated to provide raw materials. Nothing in it grants Bungie creative control of advertising and promotional materials.