Destiny is doing big business for both Bungie and Activision, despite reviews for the game (including our own first impressions) criticizing it for being repetitive and lacking when it comes to its story. People are still playing and enjoying the game however, mostly due to its solid shooting mechanics and ability to team with other players. This proves that critical reception isn't the only factor that determines how well a game performs.

The insanely large budget for the game and its marketing campaign helped Destiny set the pre-order record for a new IP, representing a significant chunk of its first week sales. Activision announced today that Destiny, in its first five days after release, sold-through more than $325 million worldwide to become the best-selling launch of a new IP ever, beating out this year's Watch Dogs from Ubisoft. The company noted that this statistic is based on "Chart-Track, first parties, retail customer sell-through information and Activision Blizzard internal estimates," so that high dollar amount may not be as exact as it sounds.

Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing, revealed in the same statement that Destiny players have participated in over 137 million events, including the competitive Crucible mode, co-op Strike missions and the game's many story and patrol missions. Altogether, over 100 million hours of online play have been accumulated within the game's first week.

"Destiny fans played more than 100 million hours of the game in the first week. That's on par with the engagement levels of our most popular Call of Duty games, which obviously is an industry leader. Millions of gamers are having a great time playing Destiny and can't put down their controllers. And this is just the beginning. Destiny is a platform that will grow and evolve and we will continue to work closely with our partners at Bungie to bring a long line of new experiences and content to life in the game."

This is only the start for Destiny and Bungie already has plans to expand on the base game. Just yesterday, the first raid, known as the Vault of Glass, went live for players to challenge, which took almost 11 hours for the first team to beat. If Bungie's other planned content, which continues this month and rolls into October, is as engaging and varied as the raids, it'll be sure to result in more players coming together and increasing their levels. Hopefully Bungie can turn Destiny into the game we were all hoping for.

Destiny is available now for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. No word on if/when a PC version of the game will release, but it'd be pretty surprising if Activision wasn't heavily considering it.