For months now there has been some debate in the Destiny 2 community about what happens to the game in the wake of The Final Shape. While Bungie has announced three “Episodes” that will launch after, disconnected stories to shake up the seasonal model, they have not revealed another big expansion.
That has caused some players, even high-profile content creators, to believe that Bungie is going to be done with large-scale Destiny expansions altogether after The Final Shape. After all, Bungie used to announce expansions three at a time, and now with the next one a few months away, we know nothing about another one as this saga ends?
This logic is…not the most sound. Bungie’s recent retention and revenue struggles with Destiny 2 are well known, and what that means is that no, Bungie cannot stop selling the most appealing, most profitable part of the game. Not unless Sony is okay with their live service studio suddenly refusing to generate significant revenue at a level far past where we are now. You could argue that some scaling back is what the game needs, but expansions are A) what bring players back to the game and B) where you can sell expensive content ranging from $50 to $100 or more for the full year, as you sell all of it as a package deal (now with added dungeon pass, hooray).
As Destiny 2 moves to disconnected Episodes, those will be an even harder sell as you can pick and choose which ones you actually get because you won’t “need” all of them to understand a throughline story. That may change in the future, but that appears to be what they’re supposed to be now.
Bungie has previously talked about new sagas in Destiny 2 specifically, and I cannot imagine any way that happens without actual expansions. And the most glaringly obvious reason that Bungie has not announced what’s coming after The Final Shape is because they do not want anyone focused on anything but The Final Shape, where the performance of that expansion is hugely important to not just the series, but the entire studio. So no distractions with a future expansion yet, and Episodes were only announced so players knew that no, Bungie wasn’t just packing up shop after TFS.
Again, it does seem somewhat clear that this endless churning out of content may be doing more harm than good after all these years, but Sony would have to approve Bungie pulling back and generating far less revenue for a while to “recharge” and move Destiny forward down the road. This does not seem terribly likely, given that Sony has just said that Bungie needs to be better about both business and delivery timelines, and this would kind of seem to run contrary to their very obvious goals for the studio. Given Sony’s mass layoffs and bloated AAA projects, this does not seem like a moment they’d be very open to giving Bungie any slack on Destiny. Even if they should.
I think this is just going to be business as usual. Episodes instead of seasons and a big new expansion every 12 months that is delayed to 15 months. Destiny 2 will continue through at least the end of this console generation and then maybe there are larger conversations about either a fully new game or Bungie moving on from Destiny. But for now, yes, more expansions are coming in some form or another, mark my words.
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