A few massive announcements came out of Activision-Blizzard yesterday. The first few came during their business-laden earnings call with investors. Turns out that one of the industry's premiere publishers did not have a great end to 2008, posting a loss of over $72 million. Since Blizzard contributed over $1 billion (with a b) in revenue to the company, imagine how much money they would have lost if they hadn't merged with Vivendi Games. Granted, Vivendi probably brought their own baggage to the merger, but I would hazard to guess that their cash cow would have covered their losses.
We have plenty more from the earnings call, though. Blizzard's CEO Paul Sams announced that the company would
release a "frontline" title every year. When I heard that, I immediately got pissed off at the merger. I figured it was the end of an era. The shareholders had finally "won," forcing the company to release titles against their mantra. While Kotick may spout that
Activision would not mess with Blizzard's culture, such a decision must have been brought on by external forces.
Then I calmed down, sobered up and thought about Blizzard's future rationally.
Blizzard is currently working on
StarCraft II - which is being
separated into three different SKUs -
Diablo III, a third unannounced WoW expansion (we assume), and a new unnamed MMORPG. That is four distinct projects, spanning six separate releases. Conceivably, they could stretch those titles out for the next few years, driving StarCraft fans nuts in the process. In reality, Blizzard actually has plenty of projects, in different stages of development, to cover their game-a-year strategy without damaging their reputation.
For those StarCraft junkies out there, Sams confirmed that the company would make non-WoW revenue this year. This puts the good money on StarCraft II's Wings of Liberty chapter
seeing a 2009 release.
The biggest bomb of them all did not come from the earnings call, but from Tigole. The EQ2 guild master turned game designer has
stepped down from his position on WoW's development team to move to the unannounced MMORPG. To me, the move puts the game at the earlier stages of development. Why would they want such an experienced MMOG designer to come in at the end of the project? Polish? Unlikely. I believe he moved to the new team because Blizzard is finishing up the early design document stages and about to get into the nitty-gritty details. Thanks for all the hard work Tigole!
There is one thing I would love to see from Blizzard, a revival of their old console properties. New titles for the
Nintendo DS from
The Lost Vikings,
Blackthorne and
Rock 'N Roll Racing franchises would be awesome. It could even give Blizzard a chance to branch out into new IP without too much of a risk, while enabling them to put more titles into the market - something ActiBlizz's shareholders would love on the balance sheets.
What do you guys think? Is Activision influencing Blizzard like I originally feared, or are Blizzard's ducks just lining up in a yearly fashion? Would you like to see Blizzard return to their console past? How will WoW fair without Tigole?
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