Destiny 2 Forsaken Sales Have Underperformed According to Activision

Activision had its latest earnings call today, and one of the biggest takeaways was some pretty surprising news about Destiny. While the fans are currently enjoying Destiny 2 perhaps more than ever thanks to the very well-received Forsaken expansion, Activision isn’t thrilled about its financial performance.

Kotaku’s Jason Schreier reported on this part of the earnings call, noting that Activision considers Destiny sales to have fallen short of expectations so far, even including what seemed like a strong reaction to Forsaken. After noting that the franchise has been underperforming (again compared to projected expectations), Activision then told investors the plan is to introduce more content to the game faster, and to introduce more options for monetization.

As Schreier notes, Activision has been giving away the base Destiny 2 for free, making it a recent PlayStation Plus freebie ahead of the Forsaken launch, and recently making the PC version free for a limited time as well. Bungie also opted to include the previous Destiny 2 expansions for free with the purchase of Forsaken, in an effort to make coming back to the game less daunting for people.

Per Activision, part of the problem appears to be a hesitation from parts of the previous playerbase. During the call, Activision’s Coddy Johnson stated, “We have not yet seen the full core re-engage in Destiny, which has led to the underperformance against expectations to date. Some players are in ‘wait and see’ mode. If you’re in, you’re deeply engaged. If not, we think now’s the time to bring players back.”

[Source: Kotaku]