Destiny beta arriving "early 2014"

Activision has revealed that the Destiny beta will arrive "early 2014" for players who pre-order the game at participating retailers.

Access codes will be given to those to pre-order the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of the game.

Destiny is Bungie's first project since working on the Halo series, and community manager Eric Osborne said the studio isn't resting on its laurels.

"We supported some pretty big, enduring gaming communities over the past decade," he told GameSpot, "but we haven't sat around giving each other high fives these past few years.

"We went out and recruited some of the most talented and experienced people we could find. We brought in hundreds of fans to play embarrassingly early builds of Destiny in our labs, collecting millions of data points."

Osborne also claimed that the beta is being treated "like a full product launch".

"We can't just carve out three competitive multiplayer maps this time around.

"We'd only be gathering data on one facet of the overall experience - one that is arguably the least resource intensive and most well understood by our team. Destiny demands more.

"Our ambition is to build big, rich destinations that players can visit over and over again, to fill them up with great story and moments that they can share with their friends, and to deliver face melting action that leads to treasure, challenge and discovery.

"We want to pour all of that secret sauce into the Destiny beta. It's a massive undertaking, but one that we believe will pay huge dividends for us and for our players."

To celebrate the announcement of the beta, Activision has also released a new trailer and screenshots for Destiny, which you can check out below.