Bungie have sort of been slowing down with Destiny lately- the studio put out a major update and expansion for the game with The Taken King, but that was all the way back in last September. Since then, there haven’t been much in the way of updates for the game, and the community has either grown fatigued, disenfranchised, or at the very least, restless. It is clear that if Activision and Bungie plan to keep their community retention rates high, they need to put out some major content, and fast- the question is, when will they do so?
According to industry analyst Michael Pachter, they may very well have a new expansion pack out in a few months- and they will have at least a couple of them out by Fall 2017, which is when they will be looking at releasing Destiny 2.
“You know, Activision has been kind of quiet about this, but they have announced a large expansion pack- and to put this into Activision speak, a regular expansion pack is just an expansion pack, so the $20 ones. The Taken King, they called a ‘mega’ expansion pack, and I have to tell you this language just pisses me off… but that was a $40 pack, so large expansion packs, I presume, are somewhere between $20 and $40- I don’t know, $30 maybe. But I don’t know that, though, because god forbid that they would just say that, they have to callout large versus mega versus small. They’ve only announced one of these, and it has been since September when The Taken King came out… it has been six months since the large expansion pack. And gamers are getting fatigued, they are beginning to complain.
“I think if Bungie hopes to keep the franchise vibrant up until Destiny 2, they need content to drop at least every six months. So, I think the sooner they get this large one out, the better. I think it’s called a large one because I imagine the original plan was to have a ‘mega’ one out by now, and they couldn’t get enough content into it in order to get it out soon enough. And instead of holding off until August or September and releasing a $40 pack, it seems like they’ll release a $30 pack by E3, and that’s what happens. We don’t have a date yet, though. And I think they’ll generate another expansion pack in the Fall- probably a regular, $20 one. Which is the content that they couldn’t pack into this one. And then I’m hopeful that they launch another one in Spring 2017, and then Destiny 2 launches Fall 2017. They haven’t given a date yet, but Activision did say that Destiny 2 is a 2017 event.
“So the right question is, do you announce Destiny 2 at E3 of 2016, and take the risk that people will stop spending money on Destiny 1? Or do you keep stringing them along, keep them buying expansion packs, so that you can hype Destiny 2 next year? I would bet on the latter, but you never know with Activision. Remember, Activision doesn’t have a booth this year- so it’s actually entirely possible with their de-emphasized presence that they don’t announce anything. I don’t really know, though. E3 is an odd one this year, because EA is off the show floor, and doing a direct to consumer show. Activision is only appearing at the Sony booth with Call of Duty, which is odd… so, you’ve got me. I honestly don’t know.”
So, according to Pachter’s projections, there will be three content drops for Destiny in the next eighteen months, with the launch of Destiny 2 bringing up the tail end of this planned content. Of course, whether or not that is frequent enough remains to be seen. With the launch of Ubisoft’s extremely successful The Division, and their promised free content model, Destiny may just start bleeding players out, losing them to Ubisoft.