According to a report from Business Wire citing an Activision statement, Bungie’s Destiny beta pulled in approximately 4,638,937 unique players in its nine day period.  The test began on July 17th for PS3 and PS4 users, went down for a day and a half, returning half a day early and adding Xbox One and Xbox 360 to the beta.  In its final three days, the beta was open to all within the two console groups, where it supposedly reached its peak numbers.

For a beta that could be considered short in length, these are fantastic numbers!  This is especially good for Bungie, when you take into account that the company has put over $500 million into this project, which would then require roughly 15.5 million copies sold to be moved to make up for that cost.

On the subject of the beta stats, two prominent Activision heads had this to say:

“This is the biggest beta of this console generation by a wide margin and the largest console beta ever for a new video game IP to date,” said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing, “Hosting a beta at this scale is an incredible feat, so we’re thrilled to see the phenomenal response.  But the beta is just a taste of what’s to come.  We’re counting down the days to our launch day, September 9th.”

“We were totally blown away by the number of the people who played the beta,” said Pete Parsons, COO of Bungie, “We surpassed even our own goals and the feedback was invaluable.  We cannot thank the community enough, the response was humbling and in the weeks ahead we’ll be working hard to ensure that Destiny lives up to the expectations at launch.”

Destiny is just under six weeks away from its September 9th launch.

My Opinion:

While I really enjoyed the beta and it sold me on picking up my copy of the game at a midnight release, I’m still concerned.  I am seeing comments around the web that the beta made some desire more Halo as opposed to more Destiny.  There were also comments that Destiny would have ten years of content, but now there are talks about a Destiny 2 and 3?  These ideas kind of conflict, and that is disheartening for the long term.

Scott Deisner is an Associate Writer for MONG.  He enjoys story and character driven content above all else, things made from potatoes, and long walks on sandy beaches ;P  You can follow him on Twitter.