Destiny's PlayStation-exclusive content stays exclusive for longer than expected

PlayStation-exclusive content found in last year's Destiny: The Taken King expansion will be kept out of reach of Xbox players for longer than many fans expected.

Earlier in the week, Destiny players noted that last year's PlayStation-exclusive stuff was still listed as exclusive for PS4 in marketing materials for the upcoming Rise of Iron.

The expectation had been that Bungie would unlock Taken King exclusives after 12 months, just as it had done for the PlayStation-only content in vanilla Destiny.

At its launch, Taken King's small print listed these items as "exclusive until at least fall 2016". And while this is technically still true, many Xbox fans are now upset the reality appears to have changed.

I asked Rise of Iron's executive producer Scott Taylor what was going on at Gamescom yesterday, but his response was that "exclusive to at least fall 2016" was still accurate, that Bungie's website lists all their policies publicly, and nothing had changed.

But things have changed.

"On the box, on Destinythegame.com, it looks like fall 2017," Destiny community manager Deej later told IGN.

Overnight, publisher Activision told Polygon the new autumn 2017 date was indeed accurate, but could not say when the timings had changed.

And, finally, Destinythegame.com now also lists "at least fall 2017". Confusingly, the page doesn't list every Taken King exclusive - some have been replaced by Rise of Iron's upcoming PS4-only items - so there's still a lack of clarity for Xbox owners.

Destiny has always reserved a portion of its content just for PlayStation players. To their chagrin, Xbox owners have always paid the same price. Exclusives have ranged from regular questlines to the meatier Strike missions, as well as PVP maps, exotic guns and armour sets.

Fans have criticised this new delay as the content will remain unavailable until the expected launch of Destiny 2 next September - at which point Destiny 1 will get left behind.

"This is horrible news, I paid the same amount of money on TTK as any PS4 player and now I will never experience the same level of content," Reddit user Toland27 wrote.

"Destiny 2 will be out by that time, and we will have moved on from Destiny 1 and all its DLC, except Xbox players will never play on Sector 618 (as horrible as it is), the new map in ROI, nor will they get access to three armor sets, two exotic weapons, and an entire strike.

"This bones PS4 players as well, as they now will have to rely on RNG for two years to get the Jade Rabbit and the Zen Meteor, Trials will never be on the exclusive maps, and the Nightfall will never be the exclusive strike."

This week's Bungie update made no mention of the exclusives situation. We've asked Activision if there is any official statement on the changes.