Destiny 2 fans have been pleasantly surprised by Destiny Rising, the new mobile game that plays very well for a shooter on that platform and has a number of innovative ideas that are outclassing at least the current state of Destiny.
But the limited appeal of the franchise outside of the Destiny 2 playerbase, and the fraction of that Destiny 2 playerbase which will give a mobile gacha a chance, may have produced a game that is going to ultimately underperform in the mobile space.
Analytics firm Sensor Tower has now estimated (via The Game Post/Naavik) that the game has about 2 million downloads and $9 million in revenue in its first three weeks. That compares unfavorably to something like Diablo Immortal, which had 13 million downloads and $39 million in revenue around the same time.
There are some catches here, with some platforms not counted and the game not being released in the Chinese market, though Diablo Immortal was not released in China at launch either.
$9 million in revenue for a mobile gacha game, a genre which pulls far more money out of players than most others, is not great. Ironically, gacha players believe that part of this is that Destiny Rising is too generous with its microtransactions with guaranteed character pulls after a certain amount of time, and the rug has not been pulled there yet in terms of making that stingier. That could change, but for now, it hasn’t. If it does, that would likely mean fewer players, not more.
The problem here isn’t really gacha generosity or certainly not the quality of the game (which is shockingly good), but it’s what I said a long, long time ago when it was first revealed, which was that it was going to be very hard to find an audience for this.
Unlike a game like Diablo, Destiny does not have widespread global appeal on that level. And to be a success, this had to be a Destiny game for mobile fans, not a mobile game for Destiny fans, because the latter would simply not produce enough players to make the concept viable. Destiny 2 players are already leaving the main game in droves, but again, it’s a small portion of players here who are leaving Destiny 2 for Destiny Rising, or trying to juggle both. The result is a mobile game that appeals to a very slim audience, a fraction of a fraction. And the long-established gacha market is incredibly hard to break into (Destiny Rising also has little “waifu” appeal, which sounds like a joke, but genuinely helps).
I do not think that Destiny Rising is shutting down tomorrow, but we have seen many other big games attempting to head to mobile where it simply doesn’t work, from Call of Duty to Apex Legends. At this point, it’s a little hard to see a bright future for Destiny Rising if these are the initial figures, or even close to them, which is a shame, given its quality. But the audience just isn’t the size it needs to be.
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