We continue to invest in our teams to train and elevate the leaders of tomorrow.”įrost Giant raised nearly $10 million, led by BITKRAFT Ventures. Morten said he “really believes” that real-time-strategy games can be massive hits. “But the right place to prove that is in a riskier, venture-backed environment.”Ī Blizzard spokesman said the company “thrives because of the thousands of talented people around the world who have poured their energy into creating epic entertainment for our players. In contrast, Overwatch has generated more than $1 billion from in-game purchases such as costumes and loot boxes, according to the research firm SuperData. While StarCraft II, released in 2010, sold more than 6 million copies, Blizzard hasn’t been able to generate as much revenue from players over the long term. (File photo by Joshua Suddock, Orange County Register) Blizzard, in recent years, has seen its real-time strategy games decline in popularity. “My perception of RTS as a genre is that Blizzard has made money with it,” Morten said, “but it’s all about orders of magnitude.” Blizz Conn attendees play a demo version of “Warlords of Draenor (CQ),” the newest expansion for World of Warcraft at the Anaheim Convention Center in 2013. So when veteran producer Tim Morten and a handful of other Blizzard staff wanted to make a new strategy game, they left the company and started a new one, founding Frost Giant Studios last year.Morten said big publishers such as Activision Blizzard are looking for “billion-dollar products” rather than simply aiming to develop profitable games. But in recent years, as real-time strategy games have declined in popularity, the gaming giant has favored more lucrative franchises such as Diablo, in which players use a single character to slash through hordes of demons, and the first-person shooter Overwatch. Its Warcraft and StarCraft franchises came to define the genre. And the founders are convinced the fans will be there for them.īlizzard made a name for itself early on with its real-time strategy games, which let players battle each other using large numbers of complex units in “real time,” as opposed to waiting turns. But the startups are getting support from venture capitalists eager for a shot at the kind of revenue Blizzard’s parent company, Activision Blizzard, generates - $8.1 billion in 2020. Without the best-selling brands, like Warcraft and Overwatch, and fan goodwill that Blizzard has built since its founding in 1991, going indie is a risk. Hundreds of ex-employees, including the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer for decades, have spread out there across a half a dozen independent studios. Now an alumni network, affectionately dubbed Blizzard 2.0 by some in the gaming community, has sprung up in Irvine, the same city where Blizzard has a sprawling campus. Gamers can then restore their progress of the game once a new publisher is identified.In recent years, a stream of developers and executives from top video game publisher Blizzard have left to create their own studios, seeking the creative freedom and autonomy they feel is no longer possible at a company chasing mega hits. 23, when Blizzard's license with NetEase is set to expire. The post added that Blizzard China will let gamers save the progress of their game and some user data offline before Jan. It did not mention whether Blizzard is seeking partners to publish its other non-Warcraft games. videogame publisher Activision Blizzard said that it is in talks with potential new partners to continue offering its hit game World of Warcraft in China after its sudden announcement last month that it would not renew deal with its current Chinese partner NetEase.īlizzard China, the company's Chinese subsidiary, published a post on China's top micro-blogging site Weibo on Tuesday, saying that it is in talks with new publishing partners in China to continue the game's service in the country.īlizzard's announcement last month that it would no longer let NetEase, China's second largest gaming company, publish its games in China sent shockwaves across the industry as the Blizzard-NetEase partnership had long been considered one of the industry's most lucrative in video games.īlizzard's Weibo post was a letter to gamers written by John Hight, the general manager of the Warcraft franchise at Blizzard.
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