Reading though the responses, it seems that there's good evidence that Destiny (at least the first game) will be just on the 360 and PS3. If so, I don't have any incentive to pick up the new Xbox if it comes out this fall. I just don't have time to get into a lot of new games anymore, and right now Destiny is at the top of my list.

I guess that's good for my wallet, but I have been wanting a shiny new console. I just can't justify getting one if it doesn't have the game I'm going to be playing.

I'm about the same. On the original xbox I played a lot of games beyond Halo. Once I got a 360 that changed. I need to know more about what kind of game it will be. I don't like MMOs but I can give it a chance. I just hope it doesn't require HUGE investments in terms of time. I just don't have it :(

What will be really interesting to see I think, is how many folks from here will continue to play Halo and Destiny. Will people be excited for Halo 5? Will it even matter if its a good game if Destiny trumps it?

As I learned in my thread below, seems like there are more people than I thought who are ready to be "done" with Halo. Ready for something else, part ways, etc.

Lots of long term things to watch here...

You are, of course, assuming PvP.
In case there wasn't, would there be any ill-effects?

I don't know, that's an interesting one to consider. Even if there is no PvP game mode, having a substantial performance advantage over your teammates might spoil the enjoyment for some? I'm not sure.

I guess that's good for my wallet, but I have been wanting a shiny new console. I just can't justify getting one if it doesn't have the game I'm going to be playing.

Does this bother anyone else?

I have a feeling a next gen version of Destiny would be only marginally better visuals and still possess the same core gameplay, or else they would effectively be producing two different games. Why would Bungie sell themselves short with Destiny by making it for 360 when they could go all-out on the next-gen systems?

I want Destiny to be next-gen only. Push the envelope, Bungie.

Core gameplay these days doesn't take a lot. You're only going to get marginal improvements in AI and Physics and stuff that many players won't be able to tell the difference with. In many respects, Halo 4 plays largely like Halo 2.

The small number of users of the 720 at launch (and hence potential sales for Destiny) would instantly make any advances in gameplay worthless as they wouldn't be able to fund them.

Here's hoping the game is able to be played across platforms, then. I'm not holding out for that being the case Xbox-Playstation, but I can see 360-720-PC being a nice triangle.

It's unlikely they would pit PC gamers against console gamers, regardless of the console. Previous tests have proven unequivocally that mouse/keyboard is so much better for an FPS than joypad that it conferred a significant advantage, even when you it was relatively unskilled PC gamers vs console ‘pro’ gamers.

Has there even been anything to suggest a PC release? All the documentation that was leaked so far only talked of Xbox 360 and PS3, from what I recall…

Next gen is going to be a jump for sure, but I don't think it'll feature quite as heavy a learning curve for developers as last gen, despite the 8-year gap.

Undoubtedly the fact the architectures of both Orbis and Durango are closer to a modern PC will simplify things to an extent, but the underlying hardware is only one part of the equation. I suspect that where the learning curve was for the most part in the current generation was learning to make best use of middleware created by the likes of Epic, which will also be changing for the new generation. I'm not sure just what third-party middleware Bungie use (I remember seeing Havok in the credits, but it's possible there are others too) but the same would apply even with in-house middleware. It takes time to create such new software, and will get better and faster gradually, not instantly. Art assets will need to be built with a specific target level of performance in mind too.

Ultimately, as great as the hardware will seem at release (compared to current-gen consoles, anyway) it will be left in the dust by PCs 3-4 years from now, and it'll be at this point that developers will need to eke out every last drop of performance in order to be able to release titles that are visually comparable on both PC and console.

Ignoring the fact that making it next-gen only would massively limit your market, there are technical complications in releasing such a title on new hardware, effectively at the launch of said hardware. Games companies tend not to have found out all the neat tricks for getting the best out of the hardware so early on, and as a result games tend to be more conservative in visuals to begin with. You can see this for yourself with the massive difference in visual quality between Halo 3 and Reach/4.

I'm not convinced that we'll see the same thing happen quite so drastically, for a couple reasons.

The first is that Halo 3's graphics are way better than people seem to acknowledge them as being. I always get sort of perplexed when people praise Halo 3's lighting and that "look" it has but then say they wish that a game with good graphics would do it, as though the effect was purely done by the art team and not engineered through a system that's every bit as expensive as 2x supersample antialising. Bungie could easily have pushed vastly more detail at a higher resolution. The game also has some decently solid bits and pieces, like the water system and the way vehicles are handled post-explosion. 2007 Bungie probably wouldn't have pulled off Reach, but Halo 3 isn't as far behind as it's sometimes made out to be. It has different priorities.

The second is that hardware architectures haven't shifted as much as they during the last decade. Programmable shaders took off like crazy between 2001 and 2005; you can count the original Xbox's shader units on one hand, while the 360's GPU features an array of 240 programmable vector processors. It took the industry a while to catch up with itself and learn to use what it had at its fingertips. And while this is an ongoing process, it's slowed down a lot. And while we've certainly tossed more stuff into the specs since the 360 and DirectX 9, it's more "yeah, let's drop this extra step into the pipeline and add more parallel units" than "HOLY CRAP LET'S LOAD THIS OLD CONFIGURABLE HW ACCELERATOR CHIP WITH HUNDREDS OF FULLY PROGRAMMABLE PARALLEL PROCESSORS!" Some of the bigger advancements from Halo 3 to Reach (like the particle system) involved Bungie realizing that they could take advantage of certain parts of the GPU for certain weird things (Reach's particles actually bounce in screen-space; if you don't see a polygon, they won't bounce off of it. It's all handled in the depth buffer. !!!). Those kinds of developments simply aren't going to happen as fast as they used to unless there's another radical change in GPU architecture.

Next gen is going to be a jump for sure, but I don't think it'll feature quite as heavy a learning curve for developers as last gen, despite the 8-year gap.

I want Destiny to be next-gen only. Push the envelope, Bungie.

Ignoring the fact that making it next-gen only would massively limit your market, there are technical complications in releasing such a title on new hardware, effectively at the launch of said hardware. Games companies tend not to have found out all the neat tricks for getting the best out of the hardware so early on, and as a result games tend to be more conservative in visuals to begin with. You can see this for yourself with the massive difference in visual quality between Halo 3 and Reach/4. Playing Halo 2 again recently it became apparent just how much closer to Halo 3 it looks than I remembered, despite being on the previous generation of hardware — it was, after all, released only a year before the Xbox 360.

Also, the leaked court documents that referred to Destiny in the Activision / Infinity Ward case specifically mentioned that the first Destiny title was intended to be current-gen only, and next-gen with the sequel. So unless the plans have changed (and assuming it was accurate in the first place) this game will be for Xbox 360 and PS3 only.

In my case I was able to get it going again by opening the power supply up, taking the fan off the motor spindle, and putting a dab of oil on the spindle. That was 2 months ago and it's still working.

Cross-gen only?
Probably get a 720 (awful name if it the official...), yes.

None of the above?
360. I don't want to be stranded with a sea of randoms when I can have HBO all-day everyday.