14 DAY TRIAL // The modern gaming industry tends to encourage early reviews for most titles, as long as their quality is not insulting in any way, because great or even positive coverage from a lot of sites at the same time can generate a good sales momentum.
Despite this trend, Destiny, the most recent title from developer Bungie and publisher Activision, was virtually un-reviewed for at least three days after launch, and even after that, the evaluations came around slowly, with some sources reserving judgment for an even longer period.
A lot of information about the game was already available to all who needed it, mainly because of the extensive testing done both in alpha and in beta stages, and because of the regular blog posts that the development team created, answering questions from fans and offering details about the core mechanics.
At the same time, a number of sources talked about a request coming from the development team to only post full reviews of the video game after playing it with the entire community for a few days.
Moreover, Bungie basically told its fans not to trust any evaluation of Destiny which arrived too soon and that it would be better to just buy the shooter in order to see what it has to offer.
First week sales are crucial
For modern video games, especially AAA releases, the first week of sales, both physical and digital, is crucial for the overall success, and after Destiny was out, publisher Activision was quick to brag about the 500 million dollars (378 million Euro) worth of games that were delivered to stores, although it was unclear how many of them were actually picked up by gamers.
Basically, the two companies that were involved in the launch worked together to try and make sure that no reviews of the title, negative or positive, were offered for a few days, with gamers then forced to rely on pre-launch hype and on streaming to make an opinion about the experience before buying it.
Now that reviews are finally available, it’s clear that Destiny is not the revolution in the first-person shooter genre that many were expecting it to be, although the game will clearly appeal to a huge number of players.
Destiny and the ten-year life plan
Before the video game was out, the development team had been talking about its ten-year life plan for the experience, and that can only exist as long as initial sales are strong enough in order to make publisher Activision approve the resources needed for such a long-term commitment.
I understand why reviews can be a problem if they turn negative too early, but I would have appreciated more openness on the part of the developers.
At the moment, it seems that the game is one of the biggest launches of the year, probably set to compete for the first place with the new Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
I hope that the game's success will make it easier for both Bungie and Activision to be more open about the title and about its evolution when it comes to any future installments in the series.