The amount of money a developer can make while owned by a platform holder, working on an exclusive franchise, is quite a bit lower than what we've seen stuff like GTA, Fortnite, Call of Duty, etc. accomplish. One the flip side, something like the $100M Sony Santa Monica burned in between God of War games on a cancelled project would have sunk most independent studios.
Destiny is, in theory, a potential goldmine if it is handled correctly. It just hasn't been handled super well up to this point. Clearly, things were coming in well enough below expectations for Activision to be ok with this split in the first place. Bungie didn't seem to be up to the task at delivering the volume of revenue that Activision wanted each year at price/content ratio that kept customers happy. Does this improve dramatically with Activision out of the picture? Maybe the base product launches better without having to hit a certain deadline, but I don't see a ton improving with the "first year" expansions (the stuff before Taken King and Forsaken) and I have a hard time believing any currently existing microtransactions will stop existing. Activision's interest made sense - it was another big shooter franchise that wasn't going to be directly competing wit COD (which sells based on MP, while Destiny is more focused on co-op and campaign style content). But pumping out content that requires design and iteration is a lot harder than just releasing new maps every couple of months, which Bungie was excellent at with Halo 3. It would make perfect sense that "Destiny 3" is the main focus over a new franchise, I just wonder what the plan is if it doesn't pan out drastically better than what is currently going on with Destiny 2. They had the market to themselves in 2014, but that isn't happening again unless publishers once again exhibit dreadful planning for the next hardware cycle transition.
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