PS4 owners will notice that a new toggle has been added to the Destiny 2 page that mentions an auto download on September 3rd. It could be an arbitrary date, but most figure this is when the game will be available for pre-load, at least on PS4. Pre-loading, for those that might not be familiar, downloads digital purchases to a console’s hard drive so they can be played the second the game launches and eliminates the bottleneck of everyone downloading a file at the same time.
As of yet, the Xbox One store has yet to announce anything about pre-loads, but it shouldn’t be long before Microsoft or Bungie start discussing the option. Pre-loading is a big incentive for going digital and it’s also a way for publishers to gauge interest ahead of launch.
Without a doubt, there will be tremendous interest when Destiny 2 launches in early September on console, and the hope is that Bungie will be better prepared for the onslaught of launch day players. Past content launches had been mostly successful, but the first few hours of Rise of Iron’s release were anything but. And that was just a DLC expansion, not a fully-fledged sequel like Destiny 2.
Bungie even looked to avoid such a situation by pushing the Destiny 2 release date forward in an effort to better prepare itself for potential launch day issues. Releasing the game on a Friday meant that the devs would have only one day to work out the kinks before Saturday, which is the biggest concurrent traffic day for Destiny content after release. There’s no guarantee that the launch will be problem-free, but at the very least Bungie seems to be prepared and even a bit paranoid.
Destiny 2 releases September 6, 2017 for PS4 and Xbox One, and October 24th for PC.
