The first game from the company which gave birth to Halo will be an MMOFPS will be intially exclusive to the Xbox 360 and its successor.
The LA Times has published a contract between Bungie and Activision, as part of the ongoing legal battle between Vince West and Jason Zampella and the games publisher. This in itself is interesting enough, but what really got our gamer sense tingling is that the much rumoured MMOFPS Destiny has been detailed in full inside the legal document.
Bungie will release Destiny exclusively for Xbox 360 in 2013 with a future version planned for Microsoft’s successor to the aforementioned platform, what the contract itself dubs the ‘Xbox 720′. Is this a codename for the next console or its final label? That revelation is only the tip of this multi-million iceberg.
According to the document Destiny will be sold in stores, but will be supported by DLC, subscriptions and in-game micro-transactions. We surmise it’ll be a similar system to many modern free-to-play MMORPGs, only you’ll have to pay a one-time fee to gain access to the game. On top of that revenue model, Bungie will also produce four downloadable expansion packs to be released between autumn 2014 to 2020, in order to maintain interest. Nothing like planning way into the future! Will gaming even be a ‘thing’ in the year 2020? We’re guessing we’ll be too busy wrestling with the perils of faster than light travel and extraterrestrial attacks to consider playing a game using just our hands.
Speaking of time, this deal was signed way back in April, 2010 so it’s worth noting that Destiny has at least been in development for at least two years.
Additionally under the publishing deal Bungie will receive royalties of 20-35% of “operating income” when Destiny is released with Activision deducting development, production and marketing expenses. Bungie will also receive $2.5 million ever year until 2013 if they regularly meet development milestones.
Gamers rarely see contracts drawn up between developers and publishers, so this document represents an ideal opportunity to get an impression of how the most AAA of deals are actually constructed and the incredible amounts of money which gets thrown around.
Since all this information first appeared on the online Bungie released the following statement:
“Well, that just happened,” states a post on Bungie’s official website.
“So, yeah. While we’re not ready to show you what we’ve been working on, we can reconfirm that we are hard at work on our new universe. We can’t wait for you to see it.”
“See you starside in 2013.”
Perhaps we’ll see Destiny before then, at this year’s E3 perhaps? We’ll keep you posted.
Tags: Activision, Bungie, Destiny
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