It’s that time again, that time being the Fall when every great game of the year is scheduled to be released (well, mostly) and, well, nobody is talking about any of the big games coming out. This isn’t just me, right? Everywhere I go I see people talking about Engrams, Legendary Gear, Exotic Gear and Loot Caves from Destiny, but nothing about the upcoming games.
That is both strange and not strange at the same time, with Bungie’s Destiny being one of the biggest releases of this year thus far and opting to choose a late Summer release date over a Fall release date when it might be swept aside with all of the other big game releases. Destiny also didn’t receive the crazy rave reviews that everyone was expecting from the Bungie release, sitting at a 77 for PS4 and 78 for Xbox One on Metacritic right now. In fact, many gamers felt rather non-plussed by Bungie’s latest outing, feeling like it’s missing some key ingredients to making a great game.
Regardless of that, Destiny is the top selling game in the world right now and is showing little signs of slowing down anytime soon. Even if some gamers are vocal about their displeasure with the game, if you own an Xbox One or PS4 right now, chances are that either you play and enjoy Destiny or you know people that do. Right now when I look at the videogame aggregator N4G.com Destiny is the #1 most-talked about game on the site. Not only by a little bit, by a ton. Like, nothing else is even coming close.
If I look at the line-up for this Fall there are games that I’m interested in, for sure. Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments, Civilization: Beyond Earth, WWE2K15, The Evil Within, Assassin’s Creed Unity and of course Call of Duty: Advanced Wars are just some of the names that stick out to me, yet most of these games have very little buzz about them. That is most surprising considering that there are Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty titles among that listed and we are approaching October and neither title has much buzz yet.
Maybe the yearly-installment malaise has finally set in for most of the gaming world with these AAA titles? A lot of us have been railing on this point for years now; these yearly releases from major studios are pretty good, but they aren’t anywhere near the best games of the year. They are just the games with the most marketing muscle behind them and are name brands for gamers now. Crazily enough, Assassin’s Creed IV was probably one of the better installments in the franchise and Call of Duty: Ghosts was, well, a game.
Call of Duty has been a juggernaut in the gaming world for years now, but there has been some decline in the sales over the past few installments, although they are still selling tons of copies every year. The decline in sales has been enough to really notice, but still a crapton of copies. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 sold 29.84 million copies, while Call of Duty: Black Ops II sold 27.27 million copies compared to Call of Duty: Ghosts selling 22.66 million copies. There is a sign of decline in the series, but it is still outselling just about everything else at a steady clip.
The other big game is Assassin’s Creed Unity, which is following Assassin’s Creed IV, which was long-heralded as *the* game to own on next generation consoles. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag has moved 9.25 million copies, which is surprisingly down from Assassin’s Creed III’s 12 million copies, even with ACIV being a superior game and launching on more platforms.
Destiny’s sales thus far are at 4.55 million, but those numbers are from the week of September 13th, meaning that we are still waiting for more sales figures to come in, but we can only assume that Destiny has moved a large number of copies considering the interest right now. The seeming lack of interest in the more established games over the past few years and the lack of buzz for virtually anything else seems to point in Destiny being the big game of this year, bleeding over from the (very) late Summer into the Fall.
Hell, the only other game that is getting a good deal of attention right now is a re-release of Grand Theft Auto V for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Maybe Destiny wasn’t the greatest game in the world, but Destiny has shown us that gamers are interested in something new, even if it is from a trusted developer and doesn’t travel far outside of that developer’s wheelhouse. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out in the coming weeks and months, for sure. It definitely has everyone’s attention right now compared to all of the other games.
