Destiny has done exactly what Activision had hoped it would do on launch: sell boatloads of copies. The company sold more than $500 million of Destiny into retail stores and first parties worldwide as of day one, making the game the biggest new video game franchise launch in history.

Based on extraordinary audience demand, retail and first party orders worldwide have exceeded $500 million for Destiny,” said Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard. “This industry milestone marks another blockbuster success for our company and demonstrates our unique ability to create some of the most successful entertainment franchises in the world. The success of Destiny, along with the recent introduction of Blizzard Entertainment’s Hearthstone, is further validation of our unique capabilities to create great entertainment franchises from the ground up.”

Destiny launched across numerous countries on September 9th, with the servers holding up quite well compared to past online launches (see: Diablo 3, SimCity). Both the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live also held the line when it came to connection stability, with only a few erroneous disconnection issues hitting players.

AusGamers is currently hitting the virtual world to soak in the Destiny sunshine, and will have a complete review sometime soon. In the meantime, you can check out Steve's article on what has us worrying about player experiences with Destiny already.