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Blizzard Forms New Team to Create Smaller AA Games from Existing IP
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Опубликовано
10.08.2024 в 22:39
Archimtiros
As
reported by Windows Central
, Microsoft has approved the formation of a new team inside Blizzard Entertainment to work on smaller AA quality games based on existing Blizzard franchises, including Warcraft, StarCraft, Overwatch, and more!
Full Story on Windows Central
Interestingly, while the new team falls under Blizzard Entertainment, it appears to be largely made up of employees from King and other Activision studios, likely leveraging their experience working on smaller and more mobile friendly games, though this does not necessarily mean whatever they produce will be mobile-only, as Microsoft is keen to explore a
three-pronged approach
across console, PC, and mobile devices.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft Q4 2024 Earning's Report
For us, our investment in gaming fundamentally was to have, I would say, the right portfolio of both what we love about gaming and always have loved about gaming — which is Xbox, and the content for the console, and expand from there so that we have content for everywhere people play games, starting with the PC.
Since BlizzCon 2018, Blizzard has maintained that there are
more new products in development than ever before
, and while we hear about the successes in
Diablo Immortal
and
Warcraft Rumble
, their
ill-fated survival game
was cancelled before ever seeing the light of day, and others will silently spin up and down without our ever hearing about them.
"In terms of Blizzard's approach to mobile gaming, many of us over the last few years have shifted from playing primarily desktop to playing many hours on mobile, and we have many of our best developers now working on new mobile titles across all of our IPs. Some of them are with external partners, like Diablo: Immortal; many of them are being developed internally only, and we'll have information to share on those in the future. I will say also that we have more new products in development today at Blizzard than we've ever had in our history and our future is very bright."
At the same time, we know that Blizzard has sped up their development cadence, now
simultaneously working on three expansions
, while also releasing expanded mini-game modes with Plunderstorm and Mists of Pandaria: Remix, as well as
Classic Season of Discovery
,
Classic Cataclysm
, and even a special accelerated version of
Wrath of the Lich King Classic
in China.
Windows Central
Sources tell me that Microsoft is keen to explore and experiment finding success out of smaller teams that are also integrated with the larger org, almost Nintendo-style for seamless collaboration. Microsoft and other big publishers are increasingly concerned about the monstrously ballooning costs facing AAA game development, and having studios cross-collaborate more closely is one way Microsoft is exploring reducing costs.
As per Windows Central, Microsoft is keen to leverage the backlog of franchises that were acquired with the purchase of Activision-Blizzard, with former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick musing on the potential for another Guitar Hero game during a
Fireside Chat on Activision's future under Microsoft
, while CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer similarly geeking out over the idea of reviving King’s Quest, Guitar Hero, and HeXen during an
interview with the Washington Post
.
Whatever the case may be, this new venture seems intended to further explore the various universes created by Blizzard, hopefully without the expanded costs or development time of modern AAA games.
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