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Over 870 million hours of Destiny and counting in 2014

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Bungie has released some end of the year statistics for its blockbuster shooter, Destiny, and the impressive numbers reflect a strong start for the studio and Activision’s highly hyped franchise. As of December 19, almost 13 million players have created over 22 million Guardians, spending over 870 million hours shooting aliens in the head and hunting for fancy guns.

For scale, if all of the Guardians lived in a single city, it would be as large as New York and Los Angeles combined. In the total time played, the Curiosity Rover could have made its trek to Mars over 100,000 times. Those numbers have only gone up by the time you read this, and will likely spike again when the week after Christmas brings many more players into the fold. Bungie implores established players to go easy on these “Christmas Noobs” and take them under your wing as future allies.

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Eurogamer crunched the numbers comparing Destiny‘s statistics to some of gaming’s heavy hitters. Although Destiny has a ways to go before it can approach League of Legends‘ 67 million monthly players, Riot Games’ multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) is free-to-play with microtransaction support, and is already established as one of the most played games in the world with a robust tournament scene, so the comparison is not entirely fair. The venerable World of Warcraft‘s 10 million-plus monthly subscribers is a more apt and favorable comparison for the young game.

Digital Trends’ Adam Rosenberg is personally responsible for more than his fair share of those millions of hours, working tirelessly to bring you extensive gameplay guides and informed, insider insights into the game’s future.

Following the recently released The Dark Below, the next major expansion, House of Wolves, is scheduled to arrive in 2015, though no date has yet been given. Though only a few months old, Destiny has loomed large in our coverage this year, and we look forward to following it further in 2015.

Will Fulton
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Will Fulton is a New York-based writer and theater-maker. In 2011 he co-founded mythic theater company AntiMatter Collective…
Destiny 2 studio Bungie hit by layoffs, internal game delays
A runner runs in Marathon.

Amid a wave of layoffs at Destiny developer and Sony subsidiary Bungie this week, Destiny 2: The Final Shape and Marathon have both reportedly been delayed.
On Monday morning, tweets from developers revealed that Bungie, which was acquired by Sony in January 2022, was suffering layoffs. This was followed up by a report from Bloomberg that went into more detail about the layoffs and their impact on Bungie's future games. Sony and Bungie have not officially commented on the delays yet, although the Bloomberg article mentions that Bungie CEO Pete Parsons will hold a team meeting later today to discuss the layoffs further. This all follows contractor layoffs at Sony studio Naughty Dog earlier this month, which happened as that studio struggles to develop and release a The Last of Us multiplayer game. 

Bloomberg suggests that these layoffs, like others at Sony this year, are tied to internal game delays. While Destiny 2: The Final Shape is publicly slated to come out in February 2024, Bungie reportedly told staff that it's now going to come out in June 2024. Meanwhile, we learned that Bungie's revival of Marathon was apparently targeting a 2024 launch -- although no release window was given officially -- but will now come out sometime in 2025. These delays make the PlayStation 5's 2024 game lineup look pretty sparse right now outside of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and it suggests that Destiny 2's next season will be one of its longest.
As of now, Sony and Bungie have not publicly commented on the layoffs or delays, but we will update this post when they do say more about it.

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Destiny 2: Lightfall fails to deliver its Avengers: Infinity War moment
A titan wielding a grenade launcher in Destiny 2..

The comparison between Destiny 2: Lightfall and Avengers: Infinity War is immediate from the opening moments of Bungie's latest expansion. There is no more exposition to get through; the Witness, a mythical villain that represents the root of the Darkness that Guardians have fought against for close to a decade, is here, and the Traveler who has given our heroes the Light and their god-like abilities is under direct threat. The stakes couldn't be higher, but Lightfall doesn't live up to that moment.

I'm not drawing connections here that shouldn't be made -- the bombastic opening moments of Lightfall call back Infinity War's unrelenting momentum in its first act. The Traveler is under siege in Lightfall and Guardians are dismantled by a flick of the Witness' wrist, echoing the immediate slaughter brought by the hands of Thanos moments before he arrived on Earth. That feeling is the same; our antagonist is here, and there's nowhere else to run. In the final moments of the campaign, a member of my fireteam even exclaimed, "hey, that's a line from Infinity War."

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Destiny 2: Where is Xur for the weekend of December 30
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Seasoned Destiny 2 players know they can count on the elusive merchant Xur to make an appearance with special exotic items every Friday, but what's not so clear is where you'll be able to find him. Below, you'll find a map with a marker that indicates where Xur is, as well as a list of his wares.

Who is Xur?
If you're new to Destiny 2 and need a bit more information about how this works, you should know that Xur is a special vendor who sells exotic weapons and armor. Each week, he comes to the solar system with a slate of goods, including an exotic weapon and one piece of exotic armor for each character class. As of The Witch Queen, he now stocks legendary armor and weapons and sells additional exotic weapons with random rolls every week.
Where to find Xur (December 30 to January 2)
The trouble with Xur is finding him. We always know when Xur will show up -- at the 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET reset each Friday. The question is where Xur will be. Previously in Destiny 2, Xur’s location was marked on the map. He’s now unmarked and harder to find each weekend. Here’s where to go to track down Xur, the Agent of the Nine, as well as everything you need to know about what he’s offering this week.

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