Microsoft Pokes Fun At Activision With Spoof Destiny “Fragrance”

There’s a rather pungent aroma in the air in the Microsoft offices, it seems. A dashing of burnt alien corpses with a hint of musky moon dust. That Destiny fragrance, dear readers, is a coy and rather brilliant advertising campaign by Microsoft ahead of the game’s release next Tuesday, September 9th.

The reason behind the sly dig is rather simple: because of Activision’s close partnership with Sony, Microsoft doesn’t have permission to run advertisements for the upcoming shared-world shooter. (Similar to how each and every Call of Duty ad concludes with an Xbox logo.) It’s the power of the mindshare, and colossal organisations like Sony and Microsoft often pay hand over first to secure a significant portion of a game’s advertising campaign.

So, to circumvent the restriction, the latter conglomerate has chosen to promote a Destiny-related item that is, let’s just say, rather different:

“Okay, so here’s the lowdown. Destiny is actually an epic new first-person shooter, available on Xbox. Thing is, we didn’t have permission to run adverts for the game. So we didn’t. Thanks for smelling that something was up. Now get the game and become a legend.”

While ad campaigns would have you believe otherwise, Destiny is in fact coming to Xbox One and Xbox 360, with third-party retailers — such as Amazon and GAME — even stocking limited edition bundles ahead of release.

For PlayStation owners, Bungie has announced a selection of timed-exclusive content that will weave its way into the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3. Plus, it’s understood that these in-game extras will remain on the PS ecosystem for nine months.

Destiny is set to launch across PS4, PS3, Xbox One and Xbox 360 on September 9th. Mind you, our sources tell us that this recently-revealed fragrance doesn’t render at 1080p. I mean, what’s the point?