Bungie Not Sure if ‘Destiny’ Can Stretch to PC

To the surprise of no one, game developer Bungie has announced that their ambitious new sci-fi shooter, Destiny, will be released on both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4, as well as current-generation consoles. There’s been plenty of concept art released already to keep anticipation warm, but E3 will finally allow us to get a better look at some actual gameplay, and hopefully clear up some specific details about the game.

The game has not yet been announced for either the Wii U or the PC, and though the latter is the more likely of the two to be added to Destiny‘s list of release platforms, there’s still been no indication either way as to whether or not Bungie is co-ordinating a PC release.

Speaking to IGN, Bungie’s senior writer and head of community, Mark Osborne, said that the company hasn’t definitely decided to release Destiny on PC, but that they haven’t written the idea off completely yet:

“We haven’t said yes, and we haven’t said no. The more platforms we take on, the more work it ultimately becomes, and what we don’t want is to compromise the core experience on any platforms. We have a lot of people who play on PCs. We have a lot of appetite to build that experience. We haven’t announced it yet, but we’re looking forward to talking more about that kind of stuff in the future.”

Towards the end of the quote it becomes a little ambiguous as to whether Osborne is referring to the PC experience or the core experience of the game, but the particularly salient part is at the beginning, where he seems to be saying that Bungie’s resources might not be able to stretch far enough for a PC release.

Since it’s been strongly suggested, particularly by the latest cinematic trailer’s focus on the “wolfpack”, that co-operative, online and multiplayer gameplay will be central to Destiny, the work involved with porting the game to PC wouldn’t end at release. In addition to providing technical support for an extra platform, Bungie would also ideally need to have additional dedicated servers to support PC players, since the game be always-online even in single-player.

The first two games in Bungie’s best-known series to date, Halo, were eventually ported to PC, but neither of the most recent Halo games ever saw a PC release. Having said that, with the Halo series handed off to 343 Industries and Microsoft, Bungie now has the opportunity to set their new IP up on PC as well as next-gen consoles. This would go a long way towards supporting design director Joe Staten’s claim that Destiny will be better than Halo in a number of different ways.

Destiny is undoubtedly one of the most exciting new games coming out over the next year and, speaking as a PC gamer, it would be fantastic to see it released on the platform. However, it might be argued that no PC version at all would be better than just another bad console port. Either way, we probably won’t find out until Bungie makes a clear decision, which at this rate may not happen until after the game is released on consoles.

Would you like to see a PC release of Destiny? Do you think it’s going to happen?

_____

Destiny still doesn’t have a launch date, but is currently confirmed for release on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.