Destiny beta codes available this week

Codes to access the Destiny beta will be sent out "randomly" over Facebook and Twitter this week, developer Bungie has said.

The beta for the open-world shooter is not due to go live until early 2014, and beta access will also be made available to those who preorder the game at selected retailers.

Speaking to GameSpot at the start of the month, Bungie community manager Eric Osborne said the team was treating the Destiny beta like it was a fully-fledged game launch.

"We supported some pretty big, enduring gaming communities over the past decade," said Osborne at the time, "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. We've built technology specifically suited to deliver Destiny's core pillars, enabling living worlds that feel like places you visit, filled with great action and adventure that gets your heart pumping, and offering up persistence of character that lets players become legends."

"The Destiny beta, in many ways, 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."

Bungie hasn't revealed specifics as to the beta's content, but Osborne has detailed the team's goals: "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."

Destiny is scheduled to launch for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, and Xbox 360 in 2014.