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Blizzard, publisher of popular PC games World of Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo, has no plans to bring any of its big titles to the consoles, it revealed today.
Speaking at a conference call to mark the announcement of the merger of Activision and Blizzard parent company Vivendi, Blizzard CEO and president Mike Morhaime reiterated the company’s commitment to its already announced titles and existing games.
He said: “We currently don’t have any plans right now on the console side. Blizzard’s focus is on the PC-side.”
He added: “If we were to release anything on the console-side, that would be managed by the Blizzard side of the company. At this point there are no plans to release any Blizzard franchises on console.”
During the conference call, Jean-Bernard Levy, CEO of the Vivendi Group, revealed that talks between his company and Activision began “almost one year ago”.
When the deal was announced, Activision and Blizzard said they will form “the world’s most profitable games business” in a deal worth $18.8bn (£9.15bn).
We’ve already had a look at the deal and cast our critical eye over whether it will have any effect on the games we all love from both companies, including CoD, Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk’s from Activision and Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo from Blizzard.
Levy described Blizzard as “the crown jewel of the industry”, and “the most powerful and successful entertainment brand ever”.
At the same time Robert Kotick, chairman and CEO of Activision said Blizzard’s games “Constitute some of the most powerful brands in all of entertainment”.
One of the factors behind the mega-deal appears to be Blizzard’s success in the online gaming market, where it currently enjoys over nine million subscribers globally to its MMO World of Warcraft. Success that Activision and others have struggled to emulate with similar MMOs.
Kotick said: “It is a business we and many of our competitors found difficult to emulate… Categories that are very difficult to compete against. Many have tried in the past and have been unsuccessful. There are very high risks and very low likelihoods of success.”
Morheim also revealed Blizzard’s intention to expand WoW into new markets, including Russia and India.
“I can tell you from a high level we intend to grow our subscriber base in the markets we’re currently in and also looking at additional markets that we believe will be coming online as broadband penetration comes. Russia, Eastern Europe, India, these are the types of markets that we’re looking at”, he said.
