Destiny 2 Could Be Bleeding Players To Its Gacha Spinoff Destiny Rising

Key highlights: 

• Destiny:Rising might be eating into Destiny 2’s player base. 
• Despite being a gacha game, it still managed to interest the entire Destiny fanbase around the world. 
• Destiny Rising is popular, and is a good way to keep interest within the franchise, especially during dry periods in Destiny 2. 

Bungie’s latest gacha game, Destiny Rising is gaining momentum and is potentially eating into Destiny 2’s player count. This gacha title is available on mobiles only, and shares a lot of features with its looter shooter counterpart. 

There was an air of controversy around Destiny Rising before its launch, especially with respect to the lootbox mechanic which gacha games are notorious for. With NetEase holding the reins to this title, having a prominent gacha system was evident. Despite that, the game has drawn quite a bit of players, especially because of the fact that it’s available on mobile devices. Although Destiny 2 as a whole isn’t a dead game, it’s lost popularity because their formula has become a bit monotonous and Destiny Rising is the change that players were looking for. 

Destiny: Rising May Have Renewed Interest in the Franchise

With Lightfall, the interest in Destiny 2 had started waning, and the game was cracking around the edges. Calls for a Destiny 3 were slowly on the rise, and that trend continued till Edge of Fate dropped. Although the new expansion marks the start of a new saga, it still wasn’t enough to bring back player interest to the franchise. 

Destiny Rising seemingly improved the situation. Despite being a gacha game, a lot of players signed up for the platform, just to see how it feels. It has a lot of options that aren’t present in the main game at this point, and one can only hope that Bungie would take the hint and incorporate those in future updates. 

While it would be wrong to say that a game is good, based on player count, Destiny Rising’s viewer count on Twitch during its launch, saw a massive spike in viewership, which was almost thrice to what Destiny 2 ever had. This suggests that the game has a lot of interest in it right now. Not only that, it also suggests that there are potentially more players that are currently playing the game on their mobile devices. While portability is an important factor here, the Destiny universe always had very interesting lore, which is something that the gacha game is holding onto as well. 

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Destiny 2 Might Be Bleeding Players to Destiny Rising

Although there isn’t a way to measure the number of players in Destiny Rising, it’s still one of the most popular games on both the App Store and Play Store right now. Since the game is globally available, it could mean that the mobile game could have a player count that is higher than Destiny 2 players on both PC and consoles combined. 

If one were to take a look at Steamdb, the player count has fluctuated constantly for a while now, with a significant dip coming in on the day Destiny Rising released. There’s also a problem with the limited availability of new content in Destiny 2 right now. With Bungie changing its expansion and seasonal model, the game won’t have a fresh expansion until December this year. There’s a major update in about a week, but that’s not expected to add a lot of fresh content to the game. 

So, till then, the Destiny 2 player count is expected to remain on the lower side of things. This is also a good time for Destiny Rising to rise. With the right kind of content, the game can hold the interest in the franchise till Destiny 2 gets a new expansion. Overall, even if the gacha game is eating away at Destiny 2’s player count, it’s still retaining interest within the franchise.

Even though not much, it’s bound to work out in favor of both the games in the future. The possibilities of cross platform promotions are endless, and the developers could make the experience more rewarding by introducing different bonuses for maintaining an active player profile on both the games.

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