Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick believes we’ve never seen a new video game IP as successful as Destiny will be.
Activision Blizzard has very high hopes for Halo studio Bungie’s upcoming FPS/RPG Destiny. In fact, CEO Bobby Kotick believes it will sell pretty well. How well? Well, he thinks it will become the best selling new IP ever. “We expect Bungie’s Destiny, an innovative shared-world, first-person action game to be Activision Publishing’s next billion-dollar franchise,” he said at an earning’s call, adding “We expect that Destiny will become the best-selling new video game IP in history.”
That’s a very bold claim from the studio that once said it could get back the “fastest sales” record from GTA V with Call of Duty: Ghosts (it didn’t). For reference, according to Video Game Sales, the best selling new IP of all time was the original Super Mario Bros from the NES, coming in at 40 million units sold. Although, that may be a bit unfair, as it did come bundled with the system, so the next best-selling IP would be the Gameboy’s Tetris at 33 million.
For comparison, Bungie’s previous new IP, Halo, only sold around 5 million units, but it is still one of the most impressive modern games on the list.
Additionally, Kotick, at the earnings call, stated: “2013 was a transformational year for Activision Blizzard and for our industry. Our transaction with Vivendi returned us to independence and eliminated the challenges and constraints of being a controlled company. The continued success of our games delivered better-than-expected financial results.” He praised the success of World of Warcraft, Call of Duty and Skylanders in particular.
So what do you think? Can Destiny become the best selling new video game IP ever? I think it has the potential to sell well, and possibly even become a “billion-dollar franchise”, but I doubt it will dethrone Tetris.
Source: Activision Blizzard via IGN
Published: Feb 7, 2014 08:56 am