Destiny beta launches July 23 on Xbox consoles

By Will Fulton Published April 24, 2023

Read our full Destiny review.

Activision and Bungie have finally announced that the public beta test for Destiny will come to Xbox One and Xbox 360 on July 23, following the previously announced beta for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 on July 17. In order to take part in the beta, you just have to pre-order the game from participating retailers and use the provided code. Xbox users will need an Xbox Live Gold subscription to join in on the fun.

Recommended Videos

Last month’s successful alpha test logged a whopping 6.5 million games on PS4 alone. Opening the beta up to PS3, Xbox One, and Xbox 360 will no doubt pull in even larger numbers to the already-acclaimed shooter. The beta will encompass a diverse sampling of the activities to be featured in the full game, such as co-op strike missions and arena battles.

The beta launches first on PS3 and PS4 at 10:00am PDT on July 17. It will go down for scheduled maintenance on July 21-22 in anticipation of opening up to Xbox One and 360 at 10:00am PDT on July 23, running through 11:59pm PDT on July 27. Destiny will launch in full for all platforms on September 9.

Former Staff Writer, Gaming

Will Fulton is a New York-based writer and theater-maker. In 2011 he co-founded mythic theater company AntiMatter Collective…

Gaming

Lenovo’s $99 280Hz gaming monitor is built for the ramen-budget crowd

Lenovo is selling a 280Hz monitor for less than GTA 6 Ultimate Edition

Lenovo gaming monitor render

Fresh off launching a metallic Hall-effect keyboard and a 59g gaming mouse for flashy esports setups, Lenovo has turned its attention to gamers working with much tighter budgets. The Legion 24-1r looks made for broke college students who spent way too much on their first gaming rig and now have instant noodles doing most of the heavy lifting at dinner. It costs just 669 yuan, equivalent to around $99, yet offers a 23.8-inch IPS panel running at up to 280Hz.

Lenovo is also offering the 27-inch Legion 27-1r with the same core specifications for 789 yuan, or roughly $116. For the ramen-budget crowd chasing competitive frame rates, both look like seriously tempting deals. (via NotebookCheck)

Gaming

I played Halo: Campaign Evolved, and its cinematics show what a Halo series could’ve been

Halo’s remake looks ready for Hollywood. So where is the show it deserves?

Adult, Male, Man

There is a moment early in Halo: Campaign Evolved where I stopped thinking about the remake as a game for a second. I was watching one of its newly rebuilt cutscenes. Master Chief, Captain Keyes, Cortana, the Pillar of Autumn, and the enormous scale of everything around them suddenly appeared a lot more cinematic than ever before.

I played the original Halo: Combat Evolved in the early 2000s, and in my head, this was exactly how it looked and felt. The first Halo title introduced intergalactic war to me long before Star Wars, and the cinematic tastefully adds enough minor touches that enhance Bungie's original work from decades ago.

Gaming

Xbox is fixing one of the PC app’s biggest annoyances with download speed

A new Smart Download Client promises faster, more consistent download speeds for games and updates.

Waiting for a massive Game Pass download to finish could soon become a little less painful. Microsoft has begun testing a new Smart Download Client as part of the latest Xbox Insider Alpha Skip-Ahead update. The feature is designed to speed up game installs and updates by automatically connecting users to the fastest available content server. While it's currently limited to Xbox Insider testers, early reports suggest the improvements are also making their way to the Xbox PC app, potentially solving one of the platform's longest-standing frustrations.

How the Smart Download Client works