With the launch of The Division, Bungie’s Destiny finally has some AAA competition in the shared world shooter space- so far, Bungie have been able to get away with a lot of whatever they want to, because they have been the only game of their kind in town, but The Division‘s launch changes that- especially since the game has hit the ground running, and has been praised all around. It seems to have avoided most of the mistakes that Bungie made with Destiny for so long.
The question then, is, does The Division pose a threat to Destiny? Could Destiny actually lose players to The Division? According to industry analyst Michael Pachter, the answer is surprisingly no- Pachter believes players will keep returning to Destiny, in the end.
“It’s a similar game experience, it’s intended to fill that void. But the problem for Ubisoft I think is that Bungie kind of invented multiplayer, and Ubisoft has never had any successful long lived multiplayer games. So if Bungie can’t keep their gamers happy, what’s gonna happen to The Division players when Bungie does come up with a Destiny expansion?”
“Will everybody switch back? I’m guessing yes. So who cares if there’s a temporary dip? I still think people will go back. If you can suddenly get 5 levels higher, and get all sorts of new weapons and dance on people’s graves, I think will go right back to Destiny,” Pachter said, before adding that players will in the end return to Destiny as long as Bungie “keeps it engaging.”
On this, I am not sure how much I believe them- especially since, in the month since The Division‘s launch, Ubisoft have shown that they seem to gave a much better handle on handling an MMO, with some exceptional post launch support, while Destiny, after the admittedly great Taken King, seems to be getting worse about content drops- so maybe the threat is there, and over the long term, not short term, like Pachter believes.