Announcements

This page contains a timeline of all official public announcements by employees of Bungie, Activision, or other companies affiliated with Destiny. For information published or announced by other third parties, see the Destiny Overview and other linked pages therein.

Major Announcements and Events

 * Destiny Public Beta (July 17, 2014)
 * Destiny First Look Alpha (June 12, 2014)
 * The Moon (Trailer) (October 1, 2013)
 * Out Here in the Wild (August 22, 2013)
 * E3 2013 (June 10, 2013)
 * Law of the Jungle (May 23, 2013)
 * GDC 2013 Panel (March 28, 2013)
 * Reveal Press Conference (February 17, 2013)
 * Reveal Trailer (February 17, 2013)
 * O Brave New World (August 3, 2011)

Timeline

 * September 22, 2009 - An in-game poster in Halo 3: ODST, read "Destiny Awaits," and showed a picture of the Earth and a mysterious floating orb nearby.


 * April 29, 2010 - In a joint announcement, Bungie and Activision announced that they have entered into a joint publishing partnership contract. The contract covers the next ten years and gives Activision the exclusive right to publish Bungie titles, worldwide, in that time. Bungie will retain its independence and its ownership of all intellectual property created.


 * September 2010 - In the closing credits to Halo: Reach, Bungie left a message for its fans: "See You Starside." This phrase has been oft-repeated since and is widely thought to be a reference to Destiny.


 * October 6, 2010 - While sitting on a panel at the Game Developers' Conference Online, Bungie writer and cinematic director Joe Staten answered a question about Bungie's next game with the cryptic response: "Wouldn’t it be great if we could make a world that was always there for you? Wow. That would be great."


 * March 3, 2011 - At the Game Developers' Conference in March 2011, Bungie network engineer David Aldridge gave a presentation entitled, "I Shot You First! - Gameplay Networking in Halo: Reach". During the presentation, Aldridge addressed rumors that Bungie's next game would be an MMO by saying, "You may have heard the rumor that we’re making 'World of Warcraft in Space.' As cool as that sounds, that’s not true. It’s not what we’re doing. The only thing that I can tell you today, is that if you love working on or playing massively... awesome multiplayer online action games, you should come talk to us; we are hiring across all disciplines for many positions."


 * August 4, 2011 - Bungie released a 20-year anniversary Video Documentary entitled "O Brave New World". In addition to numerous interviews and recollections about Bungie's past games, the ViDoc also contains several vague tidbits about Destiny (though the word "Destiny" is never used):
 * Several employees are seen wearing faction shirts.
 * In a shot of the studio interior, a poster with the Destiny logo and the word "Destiny" can be seen in the background, out of focus but still readable.
 * A terrain editor named "Grognok" is shown being used to create a mountain range. The name "Grognok" was trademarked by Bungie in May 2010, and Bungie owns the domain names Grognok.com, .net, and .org.
 * Nearly at the end of the ViDoc, in an apparent screenshot of an early build of Destiny, a mountainscape can be seen dotted with futuristic-looking windmills.
 * Jen Taylor (the voice of Cortana in the Halo series) is briefly shown in Bungie's motion capture studio, wearing a motion capture suit and a head camera to capture her facial movements.


 * December 15, 2011 - Umbra Software, creators of software designed to help game developers increase frame rate and game performance, announced on its website, "Bungie, the creators of the Halo-franchise and all around amazing developers, are busy building their new game and world. We are proud to say that the most awesome crew at Bungie are using Umbra’s latest technology, Umbra 3.1, for their next big thing."


 * December 27, 2011 - Online video game development magazine Gamasutra published an interview with Bungie senior graphics engineer Hao Chen. Though the interview is mostly from a high-level point of view with no specifics, Chen does have a few interesting things to say that might reveal more about what might be going on under the hood in Destiny:
 * "So having our own engine, where we are intimately familiar with every aspect of that engine, allows us to have the flexibility to change, first of all. Second of all, nowadays we’re also using a good mix of middleware to do a lot of the nitty gritty functionality that typically would take a lot of time. So it makes even more sense for us to focus on the ones we consider to be the bread and butter, and things that give us competitive advantage. And if you adopt an engine wholesale, you lose that competitive advantage."
 * "Our project right now is at a very exciting stage. For the first time we’re now shipping on multiple platforms, and then the new consoles are at least not far on the horizon. We have a brand new game, a brand new IP."
 * "We re-architected our graphics engine, and the primary reason is the need to go multiplatform and get ready for the next gen."
 * "An even bigger challenge is to future proof the engine so when the next generation of consoles is here, we are already pretty good at squeezing the performance out of it."


 * July 7, 2012 - On Bungie Day 2012, Bungie music director Martin O'Donnell made a surprise announcement via his Twitter account. In his Tweet, he posted a picture of himself sitting next to former Beatles member Paul McCartney and revealed that the two are working together on "new music," presumed to be music for Destiny. Soon thereafter, Paul McCartney himself confirmed this via a Tweet from his own Twitter account.


 * July 7, 2012 - In a thread on NeoGAF responding to the Paul McCartney Tweet on Bungie Day, Urk made several clarifications, confirming that O'Donnell and McCartney were collaborating on music for Destiny. Among Urk's posts:
 * "They’re not working on an album of singles. The game’s score will be orchestral."
 * "We didn’t hire Paul. Paul contacted Marty because he heard his work and wanted to collaborate with him."
 * "This wasn’t handled through our publisher, or with development resources. Paul is adding his talent to the mix, and taking the opportunity to work with Marty and Mike. Marty and Mike are excited about the music they’re making together, and when they get excited, so do we. It’s really no more complicated than that."


 * July 7, 2012 - Also on Bungie Day 2012, new forum avatars were added on Bungie.net displaying the logos of what are widely speculated (but not confirmed) to be Factions for Destiny. In addition, similarly emblazoned shirts were made available in the Bungie Store, with the descriptions seeming to match up to the faction names upon which the Bungie community generally agrees. Finally, a set of geomantic figures was posted in a Bungie Day news story, but despite the efforts of the Community to figure out their meaning, DeeJ confirmed that it was a dead-end and the Community need only know that the symbols are geomantic figures.


 * November 27, 2012 - In response to a Leaked Press Packet published by IGN, Bungie posted a short note on its front page assuring the community that, although the leak was not anticipated, much more is yet to come. Bungie also posted a single piece of concept art.


 * February 11, 2013 - Bungie began the Alpha Lupi Viral Marketing Campaign/Alternate Reality Game. On the forums, Alpha Lupi's post was accompanied by the hashtag "#Destiny."


 * February 12, 2013 - Bungie confirmed via a news article that its new game will be called "Destiny." Additionally, Bungie established and publicly announced official "Destiny" social networking pages on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.


 * February 14, 2013 - Bungie informed the world via Twitter, Facebook and Bungie.net that Destiny will be officially revealed on February 17, 2013 at 10:00 AM PST.


 * February 17, 2013 - Bungie officially announced Destiny through the Reveal Trailer, a video documentary (ViDoc) showing numerous pieces of concept art, a few short clips of gameplay, and interviews with Bungie employees. Link to Official Reveal Trailer/ViDoc.


 * February 20, 2013 - Bungie appeared onstage at the Sony PlayStation 4 announcement event and announced that Destiny will be available during the PlayStation 4 launch window in holiday season 2013.


 * March 28, 2013 - Bungie held a panel entitled "Building a Brave New World" at GDC 2013 regarding art and story design in Destiny, in the process revealing several additional details.


 * May 21, 2013 - Bungie announced via a news post that Destiny will be available for the Xbox One.


 * May 23, 2013 - Bungie released its first live-action trailer for Destiny, entitled The Law of the Jungle.


 * June 10, 2013 - Appearing onstage at Sony's press conference at E3 2013, Bungie demonstrated live gameplay for the first time and showed a new trailer for Destiny.


 * August 22, 2013 - Bungie released a new ViDoc entitled Out Here in the Wild. The ViDoc contained several interviews, pictures of live gameplay, and introduced the names of two new abilities.


 * October 1, 2013 - Bungie released a new gameplay trailer entitled The Moon and announced the Destiny Public Beta.


 * June 12, 2014 - At E3 2014, Bungie announces that the Destiny First Look Alpha will have a limited public release on the PlayStation 4.


 * July 17, 2014 - The Destiny Public Beta launches.