Blizzard ‘Refocuses’ Console Team Yet Again
Back in March, software company Blizzard Entertainment cancelled its current-gen title StarCraft: Ghost to focus development efforts on the next generation of console platforms. The said game was due for release on Xbox and PS2, but never got to see the light of day.
Now, five months after that announcement, Blizzard is back with another cryptic statement saying the company “plans to strengthen its current development efforts by refocusing key members of its console team on other projects within the company”.
Based on that statement, we think that something’s brewing at the company’s Blizzard Console dev team. It would appear that the next-gen plans have changed. Speculations abound that the Blizzard Console division is being merged into the main Blizzard offices. Interestingly, the Blizzard job opportunities page shows no new openings for the Blizzard Console division, but one job page shows an opening for a level designer “with experience building levels using any popular 3D Real-Time Strategy game toolset (Warcraft 3, Rise of Legends, Command and Conquer, etc.)”. This seems to clue us in on what Blizzard is up to – working on a presumably PC title similar to Warcraft and Startcraft RTS series.
Blizzard president and co-founder Mike Morhaime has this to say:
By redeploying key talent onto projects that are currently in development, we will greatly improve our ability to deliver multiple high-quality games in the years ahead. We feel that this is an important step to take toward achieving our long-term development goals while also ensuring that our future games meet the expectations of our players and our employees.
It seems Blizzard isn’t sure where to turn its focus. While it’s clear that the company has long term development goals, it’s unclear to gamers where these goals would be realized. Wonder how things will turn out?
Via Gamasutra
Back in March, software company Blizzard Entertainment cancelled its current-gen title StarCraft: Ghost to focus development efforts on the next generation of console platforms. The said game was due for release on Xbox and PS2, but never got to see the light of day.
Now, five months after that announcement, Blizzard is back with another cryptic statement saying the company “plans to strengthen its current development efforts by refocusing key members of its console team on other projects within the company”.
Based on that statement, we think that something’s brewing at the company’s Blizzard Console dev team. It would appear that the next-gen plans have changed. Speculations abound that the Blizzard Console division is being merged into the main Blizzard offices. Interestingly, the Blizzard job opportunities page shows no new openings for the Blizzard Console division, but one job page shows an opening for a level designer “with experience building levels using any popular 3D Real-Time Strategy game toolset (Warcraft 3, Rise of Legends, Command and Conquer, etc.)”. This seems to clue us in on what Blizzard is up to – working on a presumably PC title similar to Warcraft and Startcraft RTS series.
Blizzard president and co-founder Mike Morhaime has this to say:
By redeploying key talent onto projects that are currently in development, we will greatly improve our ability to deliver multiple high-quality games in the years ahead. We feel that this is an important step to take toward achieving our long-term development goals while also ensuring that our future games meet the expectations of our players and our employees.
It seems Blizzard isn’t sure where to turn its focus. While it’s clear that the company has long term development goals, it’s unclear to gamers where these goals would be realized. Wonder how things will turn out?
Via Gamasutra
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