14 DAY TRIAL // Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty has finally been launched ten years after the original came out and a lot of attention is focused on Blizzard Entertainment, one of the most successful companies working in the video games industry at the moment.
Talking to MCV Michael Ryder, who is the vice president and in charge of internal operations at Blizzard Entertainment, has declared, “Our heritage actually goes back to console. In the early years Blizzard made console games. It’s not the heritage, it’s the design decisions and what we think is best for our players.” There are probably few gamers who remember titles like Justice League Task Force, Rock'n'Roll Racing, The Death and Return of Superman and Blackthorne, all coming before the first Warcraft and all offered for other platforms than the PC.
He went on to talk about how the PC actually allows his company to develop more complex titles and satisfy the expectations of the gamers who buy the products. He says, “In the more recent years it has been PC and online orientated. But we play all kinds of games at Blizzard. We try to learn wherever we can. We play console games and we are up-to-speed on the console platforms. And if we see an opportunity where the game design would work well on the console, then maybe we will go that way. We just haven’t announced anything yet.”
Periodically rumors seem to pop up that one of the major franchises developed by Blizzard, be it World of Warcraft or Diablo, was ready to make the jump to console, reaching a wider audience than on the PC and creating additional revenue streams for the company. The company has repeatedly shot down the rumors but has always left open the possibility that at some points in the future it might ports its games to the Microsoft and Sony platforms.