Two years after its separation from Activision, Bungie is preparing to build the Destiny universe and – most importantly – branch out into new ones, some new ones. To help you do this, the company announced a series of new expansion measures this morning, including plans to open its first international office in Amsterdam and more than twice the size of its headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, so that it can “Support several project teams, including those outside the Destination Universe. “
“The past few years have been a time of tremendous growth and opportunity for Bungie,” said Bungie CEO Pete Parsons in a statement. “We are home to some of the best and brightest talent in the industry and we look forward to expanding our talent pool this year and increasing the resources to support them.”
To be clear, Destiny 2 is not going anywhere – Bungie’s statement confirms that it will continue with the “long-term development” of the sniper, which we already knew. Still, the company noted that exploring new stories in the Destiny universe – possibly including an appropriate sequel following the launch of the Witch Queen and Lightfall expansions in 2021 and 2022 respectively – would be a major priority going forward. To help tell these new stories, Bungie hired Destiny Universe vice president Mark Noseworthy and executive creative director Luke Smith to lead preparations for change.
As for these new IPs, the interesting details are still under wraps. That said, while Bungie has given no hint as to how its projects outside Destiny might look, it confirmed its plans to bring “at least one new IP” to the market before 2025. Or, should we say “reconfirmed” – the company locked up a trademark of a project called Matter in 2018 and made similar claims about plans to launch a non-Destiny game in 2019.