he latest Bungie Weekly Update has been published on the developer's website today. Along with discussing some of the updates coming to Destiny and the release of its soundtrack, the developer responded to a mailbag question inquiring about its thoughts on Destiny's reviews.

As you may have noticed, many of the reviews Destiny received--including GameSpot's--scored the game lower than most of Bungie's previous games, and lower than what many people were expecting. Asked to comment on reviews, community manager David Dague writes, "Bungie thrives on feedback. Never feel like you need to stick up for us when you see someone expressing an honest opinion about our games. We're harder on ourselves than anyone else."

Aside from inspiring more of the continued discussion about what role review scores serve, there is possibly a tangible effect of the scores that Destiny received. If a 2010 contract between Bungie and Activision is still being used, the developer may have lost out on a $2.5 million bonus by failing to earn a average score of 90 or higher on GameSpot sister site Metacritic. If so, it wouldn't be the first time review scores cost a developer a bonus.

Elsewhere in todoy's Weekly Update, Bungie highlighted today's launch of the Destiny soundtrack, which you can now pick up on iTunes. $10 gets you the 44-track album, or you can pick out your favorite songs for $.99 a pop.

Destiny was launched earlier this month on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. Just yesterday, a new update went out that addressed a variety of issues, and Bungie outlined some of its plansfor more updates to come over the next few months. It also recently announced some upcoming in-game events, which are nicely summarized in the image below.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/bungie-responds-to-destiny-reviews-we-thrive-on-fe/1100-6422593/

Meh, Bungie doesn't deserve that bonus nor excellent scores for Destiny. Which I'm glad they got neither. Maybe try a little harder with Destiny 2 Bungie.

A tease of the Destiny soundtrack: http://www.bungie.net/pubassets/29399/DOST_Medley.mp3

Yeap... it is that great.

Good, give us a much more substantial storyline like borderlands, or you can fuck off next time.

I never was a huge fan of Bungie games excludind Halo, and Halo 2.

Hah! Activision offering a $2.5M bonus for a 90 metacritic, when it was probably partly Activision's demand for gimping on the story elements so they could sell them as DLC in future that caused it to be under 90 on meta.

Main gripes I can see from Destiny are: piss weak story and characters; grindfest elements poorly designed/executed with terrible effort/reward ratio. The first we know Bungie is capable of delivering a good story, because people love the Halo story and it seems it has enough story to at least have people thinking about a movie. The second is Bungie operating outside its comfort zone trying to make a FPS MMORPG so they have something to learn.

Acti needs to give Bungie more creative freedom, and Bungie needs to bring in some MMORPG design experts. Of course I'm sure Acti is quite happy to not pay Bungie $2.5M while it reaps sales for a game that is selling like it's got a 90 Meta.