AS THE WORLD waits with bated breath for today’s highly anticipated Apple announcement, it seems that there’s another phenomenon stealing some of its thunder.

Introducing Destiny. Yesterday it ranked as the second hottest search, according to Google Trends. And unless you’re a gamer, you are unlikely to be familiar with it.

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Allow us to explain.

Destiny is a brand new video game that is released to all consoles today. It celebrated its launch at midnight last night at a party in London attended by the likes of Tinie Tempah, Professor Green, Ashley Young and more.

Why the fuss?

For one, it’s the latest video game from the creators of Halo, which, as you may have heard, is a gaming phenomenon. It’s also the most expensive game ever made, costing approximately £310 million or €387 million to develop.

For comparison, the budget for James Cameron’s Avatar was reportedly €183 million.

What is it?

Much like Halo, it’s an online first-person shooter (FPS) game. Per its product blurb:

In Destiny, you are a Guardian of the last city on Earth, able to wield incredible power. Explore the ancient ruins of our solar system, from the red dunes of Mars to the lush jungles of Venus. Defeat Earth’s enemies. Reclaim all that we have lost. Become legend.

It also claims to be somewhat of a gamechanger.

…an unprecedented combination of storytelling, cooperative, competitive, and public gameplay, and personal activities that are all seamlessly woven into an expansive, persistent online world.

Is it living up to the hype?

Hard to say.

Because it is played online, advance reviews weren’t really possible, so critics and regular gamers are just getting into it now.

But boy, are they getting into it.

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Meanwhile, IGN reports that the game already has “max players” walking around, which would seem to indicate that people have been spending a lot of time playing this game and likely (read: definitely) forfeiting sleep.

Despite this there are already reports of other players approaching the mid-20s, even with the game only launching recently. Seeing as the servers clicked live at midnight in each region, it’s possible the majority of these are Australians who’ve been grinding like mad, as they certainly aren’t all Bungie employees.

Intense.

Finally, how is it selling?

Well, people queued up last night to purchase the game.

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Over on Amazon, the game currently occupies four of the top ten bestsellers. Elsewhere, one analyst predicted that it could shift over 15 million units this year.

So pretty well.

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