[quote] I remember way back in the early days of Destiny, in a dev interview, the guy flat- out EXPECTED everyone to be playing 3 characters. It was the first time I realized how out of touch devs can be.[/quote] They've built the entire game & future budget expectancy on people running everything 3 times. There's lots of little sneaky things they do to boost time too, like remember D2 campaign when you only got a sparrow after finishing the campaign & a lot of spawn points were miles away from where you started, especially io which had you walking from patrol areas to the next area, this little trick adds maybe an hour to your campaign so makes it seem like it took 4 hours instead of 3, now multiply that hour by 4 million players & that's 4 million hours extra playtime going to the Devs bonus who worked on the campaign. Incase you didnt know, a lot of Devs have bonuses tied to playtime in content they/team worked on, it was meant to incentivize quality products but humans being humans & working for a megacorp being what it is, people used the cheese of artificially extending playtime.

They've a 30 year history of only ever running 1 game. Watched part of a video earlier that auto played & the guy was saying how as a company, running an extraction shooter were you just build 1 map & manage that, & sell microtransactions, is far far easier than running destiny which needs constant updates, content, voice lines, story, music, daily issues, gamebreaking bugs, nonstop complaints on top of a dying ageing playerbase which has been losing income year on year since Shadowkeep, as a business it's a no brainer. Bungies issue came with messing up & needing a buyer, so the new boss, Sony will take any profit, it's very black & white for them, especially with a 3.6b dollar defect to fill, so they're making sure destiny continues. It feels short term, like 1-2 more years by which time if numbers keep falling it won't be worth keeping going BUT if as expected there's big staff changes, especially management with a lot rumoured to be moving on, once the final takeover bonuses are paid next summer (marathon needs to release to trigger it I think) we could see new staff, rejuvenation of the game or a new game plan. On the flip side if marathon flops, & it might , especially given the expected £40 price point, then the studio becomes non profitable & we might get a firewalk shutdown. Seattle outlay is enormous & Sony didn't hesitate to shut firewalk as soon as concord flopped, wages & rent are probably more than some franchises yearly profit margins.