Activision has high hopes for Destiny with the publisher branding Bungie's game "the next billion dollar franchise" last night.
During an investor conference call yesterday, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick added "Destiny will become the best-selling new video game IP in history."
The game is an online shooter which launches on September 9th for PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.
While Activision has big expectations for the game, Bungie has also expressed extreme confidence that the title will make major waves when it's released. Studio COO Pete Parsons said in August of last year that they hope Destiny will be compared to major mainstream franchises such as Star Wars.
"We like to tell big stories and we want people to put the Destiny universe on the same shelf they put Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter or Star Wars; we've already seen they do that with Halo. We were extremely proud of what we achieved with Halo… I'm pretty convinced we are going to do it again with Destiny in a way that maybe even Halo never achieved before."
Activision reported revenues of $4.58 billion for the 2013 calendar year; a decline of 5.76 per cent on the previous year when it earned $4.86. The publisher also announced fourth quarter earnings of $1.52 billion which represents an increase of almost 120 per cent on the third quarter when they earned $691 million. They had projected earnings of $1.26 billion for the quarter.
There was also good news for Blizzard, after years of decline World of Warcraft subscriptions rose from 7.6 million to 7.8 million during the quarter.