Video game publishing company Activision may be allowing a whopping $500 million budget for Bungie’s new IP, but that doesn’t mean Destiny, the game launching this September 9 on current- and previous-gen console, cost $500 mil to make.
According to Bungie COO Pete Parsons in talk with GamesIndustry, Destiny’s development costs are “not anything close to $500 million.”
By the sounds of it, the large financial backing is there to help Bungie bring their new IP to life over the course of it projected 10-year life span.
“I think that speaks a lot more to the long-term investment that we’re making in the future of the product,” he added.
“We sat back, long before we even came to our partnership with Activision, thinking about, ‘We wanted to tell a story over ten years.’ We wanted each one of these things to have its own beginning, middle, and an end, but we really wanted to step back and we can do it. We’ve done it before; we did it with Halo but we didn’t plan it out. I say plan – I don’t know how the story goes, okay? But really, think about how do we future-proof our technology? What are the kinds of things we’re going to want to do? How do we build our team? How do we even build the building that our team is going to be in?
“We have the time to start building that out and that’s incredibly powerful for us.”
In addition, we also recently learned that Destiny will be rated T for Teen by the ESRB for the portrayal of “animated blood” and “violence.” So, it doesn’t sound like there’ll be any cursing of sorts or any other suggestive material, if you were looking for a darker, more mature experience.
“We’ve always set out to make games that lots of players can enjoy, and to build experiences that matter to people,” Bungie recently told Polygon in a statement.
“For Destiny, we didn’t aggressively pursue one rating over another, though. We constructed foundational pillars that have guided development from start to finish. We wanted our worlds to be a place people felt good about spending time in. We wanted our worlds to be worthy of heroes.
“For us that meant Destiny would never be reprehensible, but rather bright, hopeful, and adventurous. That’s a world that resonates with us, and we hope it resonates with gamers, too.”
Aiming to create a universe and brand comparable to Star Wars, it’s not a big surprise that Bungie is keeping things clean with their upcoming release.
So, what sort of new game, franchise, or IP would you make with a $500 million budget? Tell us in the comments!