14 DAY TRIAL // Frank Pearce, who is an executive at and also one of the co-founders of developer Blizzard, has said that the release during the same calendar year of both Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty and the Cataclysm expansion for the MMO World of Warcraft is just a coincidence and not a sign of a new approach from Blizzard when it comes to delivering experiences to customers.
The executive says, “We don’t set product release windows based on any financial projections we have. We want our games to meet our own expectations and the expectations of our fans. It was just by chance that the Starcraft team and World of Warcraft team both had their products ready to go this year.”
Blizzard has become well known for the premium it puts on quality and for the fact that it tends to push back launch dates for its titles as long as it still feels like the games need more polish.
Starcraft 2 was launched in July of this year and has quickly become a hit, moving more than 3 million units worldwide in its first months on sales.
The Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcraft has just launched and adds two new races and a level cap increase to the MMO while also remaking some of the early game areas.
Pearce also talked about the choice between delivering a game via download or via retail, saying, “Retail has things to offer that we can’t offer digitally – like the collector’s edition, which is always popular with our very passionate fans. We’re also planning midnight launches for the game at retail around the globe with our developers in attendance and signing autographs. You can’t get that experience through the digital purchase.”
A launch plan leaked by the Chinese division of Blizzard suggests that the company is increasing the services it plans to deliver via its Battle.net service, including sale of third party titles.