‘Destiny’ Beta Saw 4.6 Million Players Across PS4, PS3, Xbox One And Xbox 360
The Destiny beta for the PS4, PS3, Xbox One and Xbox 360 was undoubtedly one of the bigger gaming events of the summer. How big did it get? Activision shared numbers via a press release Wednesday that revealed just how many participated.
Bungie and Activision counted 4,638,937 unique players that participated in the Destiny beta. The event launched first on the Playstation 4 and Playstation 3 on July 17 before adding the Xbox One and Xbox 360 on July 23, which caused some grumbling among Xbox owners. The beta was originally scheduled to end on Saturday, July 26 but was extended into the following evening.
Lot’s of chatter this morning about the 4.6 Million people who played in the Destiny Beta. Bungie thanks all of you again for your help!
— Bungie (@Bungie) July 30, 2014
Both the publisher and developer were only too happy to boast about how well the Destiny beta performed.
“This is the biggest beta of this console generation by a wide margin and the largest console beta ever for a new video game IP to date,” said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing. “Hosting a beta at this scale is an incredible feat, so we’re thrilled to see the phenomenal response. But the beta is just a taste of what’s to come. We’re counting down the days to our launch day, September 9th.”
“We were totally blown away by the number of people who played the beta,” said Pete Parsons, COO of Bungie. “We surpassed even our own goals and the feedback was invaluable. We cannot thank the community enough, the response was humbling and in the weeks ahead we’ll be working hard to ensure that Destiny lives up to the expectations at launch.”
The Destiny beta included only a small slice of the final content that will be available when the game is launched in September. It included a cordoned off section of the Old Russia map on Earth with a handful of story missions and a single Strike mission plus kept players from leveling past level 8. Meanwhile, the Crucible competitive multiplayer was limited to the Control gametype, but Bungie added the Iron Banner mode that removed the level balancing.
Nice shots. Nice cuts. https://t.co/T1aBw2MU4t
— Bungie (@Bungie) July 29, 2014
A single story mission on the Moon was made available for a brief two-hour period on Saturday, but allowed players to explore a large portion of the moon outside of the mission. I was able to spend at least 30 minutes tooling around by myself in the Hellmouth before I ran into barriers and enemies that were too high level to continue.
Bungie hopes that the size of the final game keeps players occupied for months. It is expected to reveal the Raid mode today via IGN. This was another piece of content that was not in the beta but promises a lengthy co-operative experience.
Did you participate in the Destiny beta? Did it convince you to buy the game when it releases? Let us know in the comments.
[Image via Bungie]
