It's a tricky time for Destiny to come to cell phones
Plus: One of Bungie's favorite words is caught up in a new trademark dispute
One of gaming’s biggest console and PC series, Destiny, is getting a mobile edition, at a time when the transfer of gaming’s biggest franchises to cell phones seems more fraught than ever.
On Monday, Chinese gaming giant NetEase revealed Destiny: Rising, a game that certainly looks the part of a Destiny release, complete with sci-fi soldiers in stylish outfits using colorful lasers to blast Vex and Hive aliens. Rising is a non-canonical off-shoot, made primarily by NetEase, with input from Bungie.
This, it seems, is what NetEase has been able to get from investing more than $100 million into Destiny studio Bungie back in late January 2019. That investment was announced just a couple of weeks after Bungie split from Activision and assumed control of the rights to Destiny.
Will the time and money pay off for NetEase and result in a game that lasts?
Since 2019, many of gaming’s biggest PC/console franchises have had a tough time with the move to mobile.
I asked the research firm Sensor Tower to pull some data on this topic, and the numbers are striking. Lots of big swings, and some big misses.
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