So Destiny, a new IP and one of the most expensive games in history, paid itself in just one day

[torok]

Well, it just shows something that really looks surprising to publishers: advertise your game and it will sell. Of course, you need a genre and game that can really catter to the mass market, but once you get it and advertise as the best thin in the universe so everyone knows about it, it will sell and it will sell a lot.

This is a lesson that the movie industry already learned with the blockbuster movies, but it looks like the gaming industry just started doing that in the middle of the last gen.

pokoko said:
We also can't really say how much of Destiny's Day One sales are profit. Overhead that doesn't go to Activision has to be taken out of that $500M figure.

Yes, it didn't paid itself in one day because of retailer margins and Sony/MS cut (of course, the exclusivity deal could mean that Sony took less royalties on it). But the game will profit that 0.5B in a matter of weeks. And that 0.5B is for the entire franchise this gen so it means that Activisio didn't invested all this money yet. For what they invested for "Destiny 1", the game is probably already profitable and in the next weeks it will generate money to pay for the rest of the franchise and that will be pure profit.