A recent “This Week at Bungie” blog post provides some pretty major hints about the future of Destiny 2, which Bungie plans to continue supporting for years to come. Confirmed yesterday to be coming to PS5 and Xbox One, the next-generation version of Destiny 2 could become the game’s primary platform for the next three years, at least. It also seems to rule out a potential Destiny 3 release until fall 2023 at the earliest, if we ever even see a sequel to this game at all.
The line in question was regarding the creation of new sets of armor for Destiny 2’s core playlists (those being Crucible, Strikes, and Gambit). As added flavor to that section, one bullet point said, “We will create new sets like this each Year (e.g., Year 4, Year 5, Year 6, etc.).” Destiny 2 Year 4 is expected to kick off this fall with the start of Season 12 and a brand new expansion. That puts Year 5 starting in 2021, and Year 6 starting in 2022, concluding fall 2023.
Wording like this, particularly from Director Luke Smith, isn’t just casually tossed around without regard. Bungie knows the Destiny community analyzes its every word, and these posts go through mountains of approvals before they ever get put in the public eye. So to outright say Year 6 is effectively to confirm that Bungie has plans to continue supporting Destiny 2 with new content through its sixth year, and the added “etc.” brings the caveat of “at least,” with potential ongoing support beyond that. It’s highly unlikely that Bungie would also develop and put out a third game during that same timeframe.
With the original Destiny, support via new content ceased upon Destiny 2’s release. The fall expansion that kicked off Destiny Year 3 in 2016 (Rise of Iron) was its final one, dropping support for the previous-gen console versions and sunsetting the game as marketing kicked off in 2017 for the sequel, released in September of that year. The original Destiny is still playable but has not received new content additions since Rise of Iron.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard hints of Bungie’s intentions to support Destiny 2 longterm. Back before the release of Shadowkeep, Bungie mentioned everything happening at the beginning of Year 3 (Destiny 2: New Light free-to-play, cross-save, the Shadowkeep expansion, new ways of storytelling) to be the start of a five-year plan for Destiny 2. That would actually give Destiny 2 life through Year 7, meaning the game may not even sunset until fall 2024 at the earliest (and again, that’s if Bungie sunsets the game at all). It’s entirely possible that Bungie is working on ways to reconfigure Destiny 2 as a base platform for the experience that can continue to evolve and grow without the need for a whole sequel.
[Source: Bungie]
