Beta Arriving July & Destiny Has $500m Budget, Becoming Most Expensive Videogame Ever!

The beta to Destiny has to be one of the most highly anticipated in open beta’s recent years, in fact the last time I looked forward to a beta as much as this one was with other Bungie titles, namely Halo 3 and Halo Reach (though later map packs for this title was developed by the new developers at the Halo helm 343 Industries).

So this brings us round to Bungies latest and new project Destiny and of course it’s open beta, up until now we’ve known its coming soon, but we’ve not know exactly when.  While we don’t have an ‘exact’ date for the open beta, we can reveal that it will be arriving this July.  The news was revealed during the financial report for Q1 of this year.  So there you have it, we can all expect to play the Destiny beta this coming July, so long as you pre-order the title at your chosen retailer of course.

Speaking of finances, Activisions Destiny is said to be the most expensive videogame ever made with a reported $500m (approx £300m) Bungie Budget.  The $500m will be spent to ensure that Destiny becomes a billion dollar franchise, or at least they hope it will.  But with the creators of the Halo series at the helm, they are certainly in safe developing hands with the Bungie team.The $500m budget was revealed last week by Activision CEO Bobby Kotick at the Milken conference in L.A, as reported by Reuters.  The incredible budget will be spent on development, marketing, packaging, infrastructure support, various royalties and much more.  It’s also worth nothing that Activisions deal with Bungie will last 10 years, in which during that time we could possibly expect to see 3-5 games at least across multiple formats, heaps of downloadable content for each instalment and all the other costs (as mentioned above) with each and every release.

Destiny is scheduled for release on September 9^th for the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Below is the Top 10 for the most expensive videogames in history, so that you can compare notes (please beware that these are not exact figures).

1. Destiny – 2014 – (PC/PS3/PS4/Xbox360/XboxOne) $500m (approx £300m)
2. Grand Theft Auto V – 2013 – (PS3/Xbox360) $265M (approx £165m)
3. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009), Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011 both $200m (approx £118)
4. Final Fantasy VII – 1997 – (PS1/PC) $145m (approx £85m)
5. Max Payne 3 – 2011 – (PC/PS3/OSX/Xbox360) $105m (approx £62m)
6. Disney Infinity (2013), Grand Theft Auto IV (2008), Red Dead Redemption (2010), Tomb Raider (2013/2014), Too Human (2008) all $100m (approx £59m)
7. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008), Rift (2011), Shenmue I (1999) all $70m (approx £41m)
8. Watch_Dogs – 2014 – (PC/PS3/PS4/WiiU/Xbox360/XboxOne) $68m (approx £40m)
9. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier – 2012 – (PC/PS3/Xbox360) $65m (approx £38m)
10. Gran Turismo 5 – 2010 – (PS3) $60m (approx £35m)