You have done a marvellous job of articulating what has left a sour taste in my mouth with the micro transaction announcement. To reiterate: A lot of people argue that the micros are cosmetic only, so don't buy anything and you're not out anything and not at a disadvantage in the game. That's not the point. The previous accepted norm in video games was to purchase a product for a retail price and receive the full product. Video games are changing and evolving. One of the changes was to introduce free to play games with an alternate source of income being micros (eg LoL). Now the issue I have is when you combine the two income generation models together. Doing this means one of two things; 1) The company hasn't made enough money to be profitable and has to consider alternate sources of income to stay afloat; or 2) The company is remarkably greedy and believes they can increase profits on the backs of mindless consumers. We all know Destiny made their investment back by day one of release......hence the sour taste in my mouth. If the masses support this new hybrid, it will open the door for Bungie to continue this model and maybe even worse - open the door for other major players to follow suit.

Although I agree, it's not changing anything. Look at bf4. Paid 80 dollars for the collectors edition, a few months later micro transactions are introduced for? You guessed it. Battle packs. Same thing happened with Mass Effect. It's the way things are now. Bungee is no exception to the rule. Activision didn't corrupt them, they're just moving with the times.

[quote] We all know Destiny made their investment back by day one of release......hence the sour taste in my mouth. If the masses support this new hybrid, it will open the door for Bungie to continue this model and maybe even worse - open the door for other major players to follow suit.[/quote] Oh? How do you know this? Do you work at Bungie and have access to their confidential private internal financials statements? You know nothing.

[quote] Oh? How do you know this? Do you work at Bungie and have access to their confidential private internal financials statements? You know nothing.[/quote] Google destiny. Troll much? Took about 30 seconds to find several credible sources online to confirm what I said. If you're going to take issue with what I said, may want to pick something else.

Lol. Link one.

[url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destiny_(video_game)]link[/url]

So they sold over $500MM on day one. What does that mean? How much did they spend to make it? Activision paid, or is paying, Bungie $500MM to make this game for them. Even if we assume there are no other costs Activision spent on the game they are still only breaking even. Breaking even means making no money. Activision spent over $200MM on advertising for Vanilla Destiny. What does that mean? It means they are now in the hole $200MM This doesn't include marketing and distribution. A lot of people think Activisions is making money on this project. They probably will, but not yet. Don't believe Me? Go read their second quarter financial results. They are actually losing money in the quarter and have negative cash flow. The sales number means absolutely nothing without understanding the costs behind it. Edit: do yourself a favour and never trust a website.

I tend not to be very trusting when it comes to Internet content. You have to consider the reliability of the source (reputable website/business) and whether the info is supported elsewhere on the net or off the net. I appreciate the advice, but can assure you I'm well aware of the Internet having the potential to be less than reliable. [url=http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/6/5686268/Destiny-costs-activision-500-million-to-develop-promote]Cost of Destiny[/url] The $500 mill they spent includes more than development. Infrastructure, marketing, packaging, royalties, etc were all included. I can't buy into your argument. Unless destiny has had zero sales since launch, they've made some profit. Activision has numerous other costs, you can't say because they aren't profitable that destiny isn't. But beyond that, the $500 mill was an investment in destiny as a franchise. That means they have the next several years to a decade to increase their profit on the initial investment. I also understand that they are continuing to invest money into destiny (further content development, etc) but these costs are negligible compared to the initial investment, making the dlc's released a much higher profit to investment reward. You're not convincing me that they are losing money on destiny. However, as has been pointed out, I think I was off the mark on understanding that the hybrid model has been well established in other games prior to destiny.

You don't have to believe me. Go read the audited financial statements at Activision. These are audited legal documents. Intentionally posting incorrect information is fraud. It's all there. I've been in reporting for a lot of years, if you have any questions about in the results I can answer them. With facts. Advertising and marketing and distribution were not I the contract. Those are Activision costs for the project. Their cost to Bungie is ~$500MM plus performance bonuses. I'm curious to see how they perform for Q3 with TTK. Activision will defiantly make money in this game, just not for a few years. As far as Bungie is concerned, neither you nor I will ever know if they made money or not, unless they go public. They are a private company and are not required to publicly disclose their financial information. I don't know what their costs are. They say there are 500 developers working in the game. If they each make 50,000 a year that's 250,000,000 over ten years Bungie has to pay in salaries alone.thats a guess, maybe video developers don't make that much. I don't know. That's half of the money they get from Activision alone. When ever you see a website saying Bungie made XX dollars due to sales, you can immediately discount it as wrong. Activision controls sales, not Bungie. Gross revenue and Net Income are very different numbers.

[quote]Go read the audited financial statements at Activision. These are audited legal documents. Intentionally posting incorrect information is fraud. It's all there. I've been in reporting for a lot of years, if you have any questions about in the results I can answer them. With facts.[/quote] Interestingly enough, I've been a financial crimes investigator for a number of years (in Canada). I spend my time investigating large scale thefts/frauds, mass marketing frauds, identity theft, bankruptcies, etc. I too am familiar with audited financial statements among other forms of financial examinations and reporting. I don't, however, intend to review the audited financial statements of Activision. If you actually have, good on ya. But, that doesn't change the fact that there's some discrepancies between what you're saying and what's been reported by multiple online sources. The TOTAL investment in Destiny by Activision is reported as $500 million. This was confirmed by their CEO, Bobby Kotick as well as several other spokesperson's for Activision (I don't have time to link everything right now, wife aggro incoming). [quote]As far as Bungie is concerned, neither you nor I will ever know if they made money or not, unless they go public. They are a private company and are not required to publicly disclose their financial information. I don't know what their costs are. They say there are 500 developers working in the game. If they each make 50,000 a year that's 250,000,000 over ten years Bungie has to pay in salaries alone.thats a guess, maybe video developers don't make that much. I don't know. That's half of the money they get from Activision alone. [/quote] This brings up a point I would agree on. I have no idea how much money Bungie made through Destiny. My understanding is Destiny was financed by Activison. What arrangements Bungie and Activision have for financing, I have no idea. But I never said Bungie or Activision were seeing profit. I said Destiny was seeing profit. I still think that's a reasonable to assume. Destiny did have 500 developers working on the game. I see there being zero chance that's still the case as the game has been developed. They're not reinventing the wheel when it comes to the DLC and expansions and would take significantly reduced resources. [quote]When ever you see a website saying Bungie made XX dollars due to sales, you can immediately discount it as wrong. Activision controls sales, not Bungie.[/quote] I don't ever recall seeing a website saying Bungie made XX dollars. I'm not sure where you got that from. [quote]Gross revenue and Net Income are very different numbers.[/quote] This is a concept that anyone who receives a pay cheque should be familiar with. I'm not 100% sure what you're insinuating here. I'm certainly not arguing that Activision has made a profit of $500,000,000. I'm arguing that Destiny (as a franchise) is already profitable and stands to increase that profitability significantly over the next several years. I'm also arguing that the hybrid income model is a money grab. Perhaps one that is already established.

[quote]Interestingly enough, I've been a financial crimes investigator for a number of years (in Canada). I spend my time investigating large scale thefts/frauds, mass marketing frauds, identity theft, bankruptcies, etc. I too am familiar with audited financial statements among other forms of financial examinations and reporting.[/quote] I confused now. If this is true, we shouldn't be having this conversation. Activisions financials are pretty straight forward and would be very easy to glance over with your experience. 19 pages for a quarterly release is pretty small.