14 DAY TRIAL // Activision Blizzard is the biggest publisher of video games in the industry, as it wholly owns hugely popular franchises and titles like Call of Duty, Guitar Hero or World of Warcraft, which rake in money by the truckload every time a new iteration or expansion is released to the general public.
During a recent conference call, the company revealed, as you all known, that the eagerly anticipated first chapter of the StarCraft II trilogy, Wings of Liberty, had been delayed and would make its appearance in the first quarter of 2010. Along with it, many other new titles will make their appearance during said period, including new James Bond or Tony Hawk games.
Mike Griffith, the CEO of Activision Blizzard, also said that motive tie-ins in collaboration with Dreamworks would be made for Shrek 5 and How to Train Your Dragon. Also, he saw fit to tease people by saying that a new release would involve an “innovative property in the $4 billion action genre.”
Then, Blizzard Executive Mike Morhaime took some questions, including whether the delay of StarCraft II would affect Blizzard's usual tradition of releasing a game per year. Of course, the question was actually whether or not we could expect Diablo III at the end of 2010, or whether the delay of StarCraft II would push it into 2011 too.
“The move of StarCraft into next year does not impact the schedule,” Morhaime said. “And so it would be correct to conclude that you could expect two releases of Blizzard for next year. But I would not make any conclusions on what those titles would be.”
So even though this year might remain without a Blizzard release, we could expect the company to make it up to us next year, when two of its most popular franchises, StarCraft and Diablo, might receive new iterations. Hopefully we will know more as next year draws closer.