All Future Blizzard Games to be MMO's?
Late last night (or early this morning – depending on your point of view) a story started breaking saying that Vivendi had announced in a Wall Street presentation that Blizzard would be moving all of its franchises to the MMO format. They state an expected three year development cycle and $50 million cost per MMO (as compared to Warcraft's 4 1/2 year development and $63 million cost). So will we be seeing a Diablo MMO? A Starcraft MMO?
However, the official Blizzard response on the WoW forums has been very clear – they haven't announced any specific development aside from The Burning Crusade, and they have no intention on focusing on a single genre for future games. Another Blizzard employee notes that perhaps there's some confusion between what Vivendi has planned for its own games' division (which operates separately from Blizzard) and Blizzard's own development path.