Destiny 3 Is in Development at Bungie

A notable leaker has just claimed Destiny 3 is in early development. Bungie has had a difficult year, with major setbacks and unfortunate milestones affecting both its current and future live-service titles, so the studio may be trying to turn things around with a new game. There’s no official confirmation on the sequel to Destiny 2 just yet, but rumor has it something is in the works.

Despite getting off to a strong start in 2017, Bungie’s flagship shooter has struggled to maintain a significant player base as of late. In early October, Destiny 2 hit its lowest-ever 24-hour concurrent player peak on Steam, following a month when the simultaneous user count only passed 50,000 once. These record lows come as longtime fans cite numerous complaints about many of the game’s recent changes, and it now seems Bungie may try to recover by giving players something big to look forward to.

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Leaker Says Bungie 3 Is in “Extremely Early Development”

Colony Deaks, who has a history of accurate Destiny and Marathon claims, tweeted that Destiny 3 was in the works on November 25. According to the leaker, the game is still in its earliest stages, but there may be more information to report in the coming months as development continues. When Bungie unveiled the new Destiny 2: Renegades content roadmap, it mentioned it was delaying a full State of the Game and multi-year plan until 2026, which may suggest something major in the pipeline. It’s possible that the start of work on Destiny 3 was behind that pushback, although Bungie has not specified its reasoning yet.

It’s also worth noting that Bungie released a Destiny 2 player survey recently, with many of the questions revolving around how users feel about potential features. In light of the Destiny 3 news, this may seem like developers gauging interest in quality-of-life improvements and new mechanics that could make their way into a new game. Of course, these changes could just be for Destiny 2, but if any adjustments go well, it could inform development decisions for the third title. In that way, the final era of Destiny 2 could serve as a proof of concept of what may work and what won’t in Destiny 3.

As a live-service game, Destiny 2 could theoretically go on forever instead of Bungie releasing an entirely new entry in the series. However, the game’s reputation has sunk to new lows, so it would make sense if the studio decided it’d be a better use of resources to start over from scratch. After all of Destiny 2‘s struggles and Marathon being delayed indefinitely, Bungie needs a win, so revamping the Destiny franchise is a reasonable strategy to win back fans. The second Destiny game is also quickly approaching the 10-year mark since its release, so it may be time to breathe new life into the IP.

If Bungie really is working on a new Destiny game, it could face significant pressure to release a hit. Sony confirmed it’s rethinking the PlayStation studio model after Concord‘s failure, taking greater precautions to ensure its live-service games, a focus for the company, don’t fail the same way. Given how Marathon and Destiny 2 have gone lately, there could be a lot riding on Destiny 3 amid this shift. For now, though, the future of the Destiny series is unclear. Colony Deaks did say the next game is in “very early development” so it may be a while, probably at least a couple of years, before it comes out. An official announcement may come sooner, but things are still uncertain in the meantime.

Released

August 28, 2017

ESRB

T For TEEN for Blood, Language, and Violence