Here are some alternatives (I wanted to include them all in the poll, but you can't have more than seven possible answers):
Electronic Arts
Capcom
Disney Interactive Studios
Warner Bros. Games
Ubisoft
Konami
Sega
Namco Bandai Games
Take-Two Interactive (2K Games / Rockstar Games)
Square Enix
Bethesda Softworks
THQ (back in 2010 it would have been an option)
Atlus
Deep Silver
I would have gone with 2K or Rockstar because
- Bungie already has a history with Take-Two (published the PS2 version of Oni, once owned a part of Bungie, have the rights to Myth and Oni)
- Take-Two is one of the biggest non-ActiUbiEA publishers and they've got a pretty good marketing machinery too (remember the GTA, Bioshock and Max Payne TV ads)
- As you can see in GTA V or Bioshock Infinite they give the developers the time they need (both had a development time of over 5 years)
- with Borderlands they've published a game that's very similar to Destiny
- many of the games they produced are top-notch (GTA, Bioshock, RDR, Max Payne, XCOM, Civilization, Borderlands, ...)
- maybe Bungie could've negotiated that as part of the publishing contract they would have got the Oni and Myth rights back
-
I would've preferred them to self-publish, but that's rather unrealistic. I'm not surprised they didn't. Looking at the scope of Destiny, it looks like it has taken considerable funding and, despite their previous success, I'm not sure Bungie has a billion dollars lying around. I'm not a fan of either Activision or EA really. MS wouldn't have really worked considering where Bungie are at at the moment. So 2K doesn't sound too bad really.