During a presentation in New York today, Thomas Tippl, Activision Blizzard chief financial officer, raved about the strong business done by Bliizard games. He said the division has a full pipeline of content, which he presented in the slide pictured here.
While the lineup confirms continued World of Warcraft support and a Starcraft II launch in 2010 (with expansions to follow after), Diablo III was marked to be released in 2011 at the soonest.
Savin Wangtal
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 6:41 AMYeahhh….
Coming soon for Bliz ends up taking years. I wonder how long “next few years” is going to end up taking. I’d wager about a decade or two.
Blake
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 9:32 AMWarcraft: Orcs & Humans – 1994
Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness – 1995
Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal – 1996
Diablo – 1996
StarCraft – 1998
StarCraft: Brood War – 1998
Diablo II – 2000
Diablo II: Lord of Destruction – 2001
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos – 2002
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne – 2003
World of Warcraft – 2004
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade – 2007
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King – 2008
Besides the 3 year gap between WoW and their first expansion, all Blizzard’s expansion packs have been out less than a year after the original product. Furthermore since 1994 the years they haven’t released any major product were 1997, 1999, 2005, 2006, 2009.
You can be sure the Starcraft 2 expansions will come out in 2011 and 2012 and Diablo 3 will most likely be one of those years with an expansion the year after.
As for the MMO, you can be sure there’ll be at least one WoW expansion (after Cataclysm) coming before the new game comes so to me it sounds like Blizzard are actually going to be really busy releasing stuff until 2014 minimum.
tldr;
Blizzard release games a lot more often than you realise.
mike
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 10:13 AMExpansions aren’t games and should not take as long to make. Do you know how many teams they have working? And how many staff? WOW came out in 2004 its almost 2010 and there isn’t another game yet. That’s a long time.
Andrew Mills
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 7:18 AMWhat they do, they do really well. I’m quite happy to wait for years between releases when it comes to Blizzard.
Damien
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 8:18 AMYeah the only problem I have here is that games that seem to take forever to come out and keep getting pushed back are heralded at the next best thing, but, after a while they get passed by technology and ideas and once the game finally comes out it seems old and already done. Too Human was meant to be awsome if it came out when originally said but by the time it came it was outdated and many of the “New” ideas had already been done in other games. Seen as we have already seen video footage of Diablo III some time ago, how on earth will the game stand up 2-3 years from now??? And Id take that as a minimum probably because A few usually means 3 or more….
Shame really because with borderlands out now and people talking about it like the new diablo, what will we have in 3 years time and will the footage of Diablo III out at current stand the test of time???
plmko
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 4:03 PMWow they said that 10yrs ago, I know what I want for my 12th birthday…..disappointment