Over 4.6 million people played the recent Destiny beta, Activision has announced.

That's 4,638,937 people, to be exact.

The beta closed on Sunday having launched first on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 on 17th July for those who had pre-ordered the game. It was then opened up to Xbox One and Xbox 360 owners who had pre-ordered, before opening up to all.

Activision said it was the largest console beta for a new video game intellectual property, and, as you'd expect, the biggest beta on he current generation of consoles.

Activision Publishing boss Eric Hirshberg said: "This is the biggest beta of this console generation by a wide margin and the largest console beta ever for a new video game IP to date.

"Hosting a beta at this scale is an incredible feat, so we're thrilled to see the phenomenal response. But the beta is just a taste of what's to come. We're counting down the days to our launch day, September 9th."

Destiny is the new upcoming shooter from Bungie, the creator of the Halo series. It fuses first-person shooting with massively multiplayer mechanics in a science-fiction setting.

Bungie COO Pete Parsons added: "We were totally blown away by the number of people who played the beta.

"We surpassed even our own goals and the feedback was invaluable. We cannot thank the community enough, the response was humbling and in the weeks ahead we'll be working hard to ensure that Destiny lives up to the expectations at launch."