14 DAY TRIAL // Bungie’s first game since the Halo series has the potential to be a really big hit this year, according to a Sterne Agee analyst.
The upcoming science-fiction first-person shooter could sell as many as 15 million copies from its launch two weeks from now to the end of the year, according to Arvind Bhatia, a Sterne Agee analyst, who has told investors that sales expectation for Destiny are somewhere between 8 and 15 million units.
The statement is based on Sterne Agee’s internal retailer checks, as well as on the immense positive response that the game’s beta garnered, with over 4.6 million participants across all four platforms.
In addition to this, this year’s competitive slate is said to be more friendly than last year’s, and so the firm is convinced that Destiny could sell up to 15 million copies.
Publisher Activision and developer Bungie both believe that Destiny has the potential to become the third billion-dollar franchise in Activision’s portfolio, joining Skylanders and Call of Duty.
The company has sunk a lot of money into the development, infrastructure and marketing of the upcoming multiplayer-based first-person shooter, stating that it’s the biggest such investment since the last Call of Duty title.
Some reports claim that Activision spent as much as $500 / €380 million on Destiny, and its commitment to the brand new IP does not stop here, as the company has revealed its long-term plans to support it for years after launch.
The company’s first such step is The Dark Below, a DLC pack said to come out in December, and Activision’s extensive post-release plans for Destiny include so much content that players will be hard-pressed to see everything that the game has to offer.
Sterne Agee is not the only analyst company predicting optimistic sales for Destiny, as it is joined by at least one other such firm, Cowen & Company, that predicts that the sci-fi shooter could very well sell 10 to 15 million copies this year, poised to surpass even Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, one of the most intriguing entries in the military shooter series.
Bhatia says that if the game manages to sell 10 million copies by the end of the year, those sales combined with the revenue from the December DLC might make the game “marginally” profitable for Activision right from the new franchise’s debut, as GameSpot reports.
Destiny is coming out on September 9, headed for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 home consoles from Sony, and the Xbox 360 and Xbox One computer entertainment systems from Microsoft.