Activision has announced that Destiny has made more than $500 million on its first day. However, not all of that money comes from sales to consumers happy to take the wraps off the hotly anticipated social first-person shooter.
It is unclear how much Activision has actually made from direct sales. The company's post-launch press release, however, says that the $500 million revenue comes from a combination of "retail stores and first parties worldwide." This means it's too early for Activision to claim that 10 million customers around the world have picked up the $50 game from the stores. Activision has simply shipped around that amount of copies to retailers on its first day.
"Based on extraordinary audience demand, retail and first-party orders worldwide have exceeded $500 million for Destiny," says Activision chief executive Bobby Kotick in the press release. "This industry milestone marks another blockbuster success for our company and demonstrates our unique ability to create some of the most successful entertainment franchises in the world."
Destiny has been surrounded by a lot of hype largely because it is the first game that attempts to bring together two popular gaming aspects, namely massively multiplayer online role-playing games and first-person shooters. It is also the first game developed by Bungie after Halo became a megahit with gamers and the most preordered game in history.
Activision, which publishes and distributes the game, has leaned excessively toward reporting about its sell-in numbers, or the numbers of copies shipped to retail stores, instead of the actual sell-through rate.
In November, the company pumped up the hype machine when it announced that Call of Duty: Ghosts amassed $1 billion in sales, prompting a media frenzy of news reports saying the latest Call of Duty title is the world's biggest-selling game at launch.
However, a report by Forbes cited Activision chief financial officer Dennis Durkin, who said that the $1 billion figure accounted for the revenue made by shipping Ghosts to retailers on day one of the game's release. It did not refer to the amount of sales made by selling the game to end users. Durkin did not specify how much Activision made from first-party sales of the game, but confirmed that Ghosts did not raise as much as Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 did when it was introduced. Blacks Ops 2 made $500 million in sales to gamers, not retail stores, on its first day.
Analysts were expecting Activision to sell more than $600 million of Destiny in its first 24 hours. Activision stocks saw a slight dip by 38 cents to $23.35 after the press release.
