It seems like Destiny is determined to continue bringing in high numbers. Bungie's sci-fi shooter has raked in a cool $325 million in its first week on store shelves (which puts the number of actual disks around five million) and will most likely continue to sell well into the holiday season. Lately, it seems that Destiny is breaking other records, too.
During its first week in players' hands, Destiny shattered the previous Twitch viewing record, topping off at over 5 million unique viewers in one week.
Destiny's success on Twitch began before the game was even released. The Destiny beta was being broadcast seemingly nonstop back in July, with players exploring the world and facing off against each other in multiplayer. That trend has continued, with over 20 million visits to the site and 4 million hours of gameplay watched within the first week of play.
To put those numbers in perspective, the only other game to even come close to Destiny's record was EA's Titanfall, which was the most popular game on the service when it launched for the Xbox One earlier this year. Titanfall was broadcast for 23 million minutes (or 380,000 hours) during its first month on Twitch, and while the numbers are impressive, it doesn't even compare when stacked up against Destiny.
Twitch announced the statistics in a press release earlier today, along with a statement from Bungie's community manager, David Dague:
"Our community has always blown us away with their desire to share, entertain, and inspire," said David Dague, Community Manager at Bungie. "Watching them broadcast their Destiny experiences on Twitch - from the Tower to the Crucible to the Vault of Glass Raid - has been nothing short of amazing. We're humbled by the enthusiasm and we hope our community knows we're watching and laughing and applauding back home at the studio."
The numbers, while great news for Twitch (and new owner Amazon), mean a whole lot more to Bungie. Since its release, Destiny has struggled to find much traction with critics; review scores have been mixed, and many reviewers have stated that the game is simply too repetitive in nature. The community seems to think otherwise, with dedicated players streaming the game almost around-the-clock.
Bungie returned the favor by featuring a list of streamers when its first batch of endgame content was released earlier this week. With any luck, Bungie just may be able to work together with the Destiny community, and in turn, boost its own reputation within the industry.
