Bungie and Activision, the game creators behind "Halo" and "Call of Duty" respectively, are teaming up to bring a new project to gamers next spring. Destiny will put heroes against an alien force from the Moon in order to defend the last city on Earth.
The publishers will launch a beta for Destiny available to gamers who pre-order copies of the game from retailers like Amazon and Best Buy. After pre-ordering the game, users of the PlayStation 3, PlaStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One will receive a code that they can then redeem on Bungie's website.
"The Destiny beta, in many ways, is being treated like a full product launch. We can't just carve out three competitive multiplayer maps this time around," said Bungie's community manager Eric Osborne to GameSpot, referring to Bungie's past beta tests with Halo 3 and Halo Reach. "We'd only be gathering data on one facet of the overall experience -- one that is arguably the least resource intensive and most well understood by our team. Destiny demands more."
This time around Bungie seems keen to make the release of its new game's beta less of a test of the game's mechanics and more of a test of the developer's fans. They want to offer more than just a simple way for people to test out the game mechanics but, since it's a new title, a way for people to get as immersed in the new world it has created.
"Our ambition is to build big, rich destinations that players can visit over and over again, to fill them up with great story and moments that they can share with their friends, and to deliver face melting action that leads to treasure, challenge, and discovery," Osborne explained. "We want to pour all of that secret sauce into the Destiny beta. It's a massive undertaking, but one that we believe will pay huge dividends for us, and for our players."
The beta will go live sometime this spring. "Destiny" is the first game from Bungie since it stopped making games in the Halo franchise and gave the rights over to 343 Industries.
