It’s official: Bungie has split from Activision. The developer still owns the rights to its Destiny franchise and will pursue self-publishing for the foreseeable future. While it may not be under tons of pressure to follow the previously annual release of content, there’s still a very high possibility of Destiny 3 releasing soon.
This is according to research firm Cowen and Company, who predicted to investors in a recent note (as per GameSpot) that the sequel would arrive in 2020. The firm explained that despite the old deal between Bungie and Activision outlining a new game every two years, the duration jumped to three years. This probably caused the “growing divergence” between both companies’ visions for Destiny.
Cowen and Company also believes that both games didn’t produce the “recurring revenue stream” that Activision was seeking. Activision will now seemingly focus on franchises like Call of Duty. After all, providing more resources for franchises that it feels are living up to expectations is better than investing in those that aren’t, as per the firm. The firm also states that though Bungie likely paid a fee for Destiny’s publishing rights, it wouldn’t have been an “enormously significant” sum.
“Ultimately, we think this decision is probably for the best for Destiny as a franchise, as we think having two head cooks in the kitchen with somewhat divergent views created some issues with the development process and led the game down some blind alleys. Destiny was a worthwhile attempt by Activision to build another cornerstone franchise, one that just didn’t quite pan out as they had hoped (underlining once again the high difficulty of creating and managing a successful live service game business), in our view,” said Cowen.
Bungie still has content coming for Destiny 2. Annual Pass holders will receive The Last Word quest later this month and Joker’s Wild in March.