Destiny 2 PC to Launch Exclusively on Battle.net
Blizzard is welcoming another game to the Battle.net family, and the game is none other than this year's highly anticipated first-person shooter Destiny 2. Developed by Bungie but published by Blizzard's sister company Activision, Destiny 2 marks itself as the first non-Blizzard game to release on the Battle.net platform.
A recent Blizzard news post details the decision to launch Destiny 2 on Battle.net.
Blizzard has an established and successful global internet infrastructure we’ve used for years to our own games. Creating a new network client for Destiny 2, which is bringing the franchise to PC for the first time, would needlessly extend the development period for the game. We want to get our hands on Destiny 2 as soon as possible like everybody else, so we offered to share our PC platform with our sister companies for this release.
Destiny 2 will be tied to a player's Blizzard and make use of Battle.net's existing social features, such as Battle.net's chat, friendslist and in-game status visibility. Bungie however, will be wholly managing Destiny 2's servers and customer , with Blizzard maintaining that it will only "handle customer service for platform and shop issues specific to our [Battle.net] service".
The launching of Destiny 2 on Blizzard's exclusive platform also raises questions on whether Battle.net will be acquiring any other non-Blizzard games in the foreseeable future. Blizzard however, states that their only third-party focus is currently on Destiny 2.
Our focus in of ing non-Blizzard games is solely around Destiny 2. Aside from potentially evaluating needs or opportunities for future Activision games, we don’t have any short- or long-term plans to third-party games with Battle.net. It’s important to us to maintain our quality standards for any experience or service we’re putting in front of our players, which represents a big investment of time and effort on our part, so this is not something we’re jumping into lightly.
As Destiny 2 is being prepped for its PC debut, Bungie is working hard to adapt and address issues to ensure a smooth rollout.
We know we have to come out of the gate and be legit on day one. So we tried to focus on the things that we think will most say, to the PC gamer, "we hear you, we love you and we want to you."
Focusing on things like up to 4K resolution, uncapped framerate, mouse and keyboard with full key remapping, adjustable FOV, tons of graphical options, for different aspect rations—21:9—and text chat. You know, a ton of different things that are those feature sets that, when people bitch about a game just being a console port, those things are missing.
I have no doubt that from today forward we will continue to get PC-specific , and we’ll look at that as a good way to prioritize.
While the game will undoubtedly be a stunning visual experience on the PC, fans with a less than stellar setup will still be able to enjoy the game. No official minimum specs have been announced as of yet, but Bungie assures players that "you absolutely won’t have to buy the latest and greatest hardware to be able to play the game and have a fun, quality experience".
Despite the fact that Bungie is doing a "a ton of work to try and make [Destiny 2] feel and play like a great PC shooter", there are still a few major drawbacks to Destiny 2's PC edition.
As it stands, Bungie has officially stated that there are no dedicated servers for Destiny 2 PC. There will also be no persistent s between platforms (though this may not come as a surprise to many), meaning PC players will not be able to interact with console players, and that and item transfers between platforms are also not possible.
There is currently no release date set for the PC edition of Destiny 2. PS4 owners however, will manage to get their hands on the game first, with the game's PS4 release set to launch on September 8th, 2017.
With E3 2017 coming up soon in mid-June, fans can be sure to look forward to more big reveals and exciting announcements for Destiny 2 till then.
