A rumored PC version next year is merely icing on the cake.

This is kind of one of those areas I'd like Bungie to be a little more open about, simply because of the investment required to play Destiny on PS4.

There's the cost of the PS4, and the cost of PSN+. If that could have been avoided and I could have gotten a PC version, I'd have been happier. If a PC version is announced shortly I might be an unhappy camper.

It'd have to be significantly worse than Halo (or at least significantly worse than something it's competing against) not to be.

At its best, Halo games launched on a single console platform generation at a time, with PC ports only coming years later for certain games in the series, sometimes with weird OS restrictions.

Destiny is launching day and date on four different consoles. They can have a significantly lower attach rate than Halo on any or all of those individual platforms and still sell as much as an average Halo title. If they were to achieve a similar attach rate on one or more of those platforms, I think they'd have a good run at doing as well or better as the best-selling entries in the Halo series.

A rumored PC version next year is merely icing on the cake.

No matter who you are, new IP is hard, and hitting square between console generations is hard. I mean, do we compare Destiny's first release sales with the first Halo's sales as a new IP (~7 mil), or with the high water mark of Halo 3? (~11 mil)

If destiny hits 10 million in it's first iteration it will be a pretty huge success, as it will have a ton of room to grow. If it hits the high end of the scale at 20 million for a new IP it will be basically unprecedented.

New article about the beta on the Verge.

Well I would hope so. It's going to be released on four consoles after all.

Halo is big. Halo is a system seller. It's what gave legitimacy to Microsoft's fledgling console 10 years ago.

Arguably, Halo helped to build XBL into what it is now, and inspired a multitude of other shooters.

And as we know, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Destiny will do the same, but this time for PS4. It will bring legitimacy to PS+, and give people a reason to consider PS4 as their hub for online gaming. Truth be told, without Destiny, I personally had no reason to want a PS4 (other than some of the people I like being there [damn you for that]).

You've said many a time that Bungie is a lot like Apple, and I agree with you. Bungie isn't necessarily the best at innovating brand new stuff (hold on a second fans), but they ARE really good at taking something that already exists, and making it way better.

Also like Apple, they are very good at combining things that at first glance most would shrug off and then making it something you didn't even know you wanted.

As long as Halo remains a console exclusive, Destiny should easily be bigger. Kind of how like CoD is bigger than Halo. You can get it on any system. This is in terms of gaming.

However, Destiny doesn't yet have the other media that Halo has built up (live action shows, DVDs, novels, comics, toys, clothing, etc). So for media presence, I have to say Halo is bigger in that respect.

But those things come with time, obviously.

Once Destiny has that stuff, it will be bigger than Halo in every way. And that is not a bad thing, nor does it make Halo inferior (not saying you are saying that).

[

Shameless Rev wishes: I hope Destiny stays small as long as it can. I've always felt Halo felt best when it was small. Once a film or TV show or game reaches that 'critical mass' of popularity, it loses some of it's magic as it just becomes a money machine for who owns it.

-Rev

Not a hipster ]

Good post.

I think it's inarguable that Halo helped to build XBL into what it is now, and inspired a multitude of other shooters.

For me the best Halo content was in the games. I've enjoyed some of the rest, but whereas Halo games were best of class, other Halo content, with some notable exceptions, were not best of class novels, short stories, videos, what have you.

From this week's BWU:

"Our favorite achievement is the concurrency statistic. At its peak, the Destiny Beta became the most simultaneously played Bungie game of all time. There were more people online at the same time to play Destiny than any other game in our history. The Beta was more played than even final versions of previous Bungie games."

None of that, of course, guarantees that Destiny will be bigger than Halo, but it's also hard to look at the Beta statistics and say, "well, this isn't going to be as big as Halo."

Bigger in terms of numbers. And in gigabytes.

But what about bigger in terms of design influence? Halo was hugely influential in pushing the standards for console first person shooters. Destiny doesn't really feel to do that so much, but rather it mishmashes existing systems.

What about bigger in terms of cultural influence?

What about bigger in terms of page size and number of articles on the applicable .isnotcanon.net?