Blizzard has largely became a company that has relied on a few franchises that they support on a constant basis. Whether it be World of Warcraft, Overwatch, or Diablo, they have found their very successful niche and have stuck to it. It’s hard to say whether that will change anytime soon, but the president of the company does say some things that point to more titles coming soon.
Sitting down with Forbes, J. Allen Brack spoke about the company’s future. He actually says that Blizzard has more games in development now than they have “ever had in Blizzard’s history”. He doesn’t go into any details about what games they are, but seems to hint they could be games in their current crop of profitable IPs, saying that he respects the desire some players have for new franchises but thinks making a good game preempts all.
“We can’t wait to share everything we’re working on. We have more games in development right now than we’ve ever had in Blizzard’s history,” Brack said. “That includes core game genres on core platforms like PC and console, in addition to mobile initiatives. And the reason we’re further expanding our focus on our development priorities is because we understand that it’s not enough to just make more—that’s pointless if we’re not holding ourselves to our standards with everything we release.”
“It’s always exciting to have a new IP, and there are a lot of reasons to work toward it,” he said later on the topic of new IPs. “As developers we get excited working on new things for many of the same reasons that players want to play something new. In the end, the most important thing to us is to create something that’s great .A great game experience can happen within a new IP, and it can happen within a longtime favorite. That’s going to continue to be our goal, more than creating a new IP just for its own sake.”
We do know that the Overwatch team is currently working on something unannounced, while Blizzard also apparently has multiple Diablo and Warcraft games in development– but Brack didn’t mention any of those specifically, of course.
He also briefly touched on VR, and noted that Blizzard doesn’t have a lot of interest in the technology right now. They’re certainly keeping an eye on it, and see it as something they will eventually get to- but don’t expect anything too soon from them in that area.
“We’re not the first company that’s going to make an awesome VR game,” Brack said. “We’re going to learn the lessons from other VR titles, and one day VR is going to become a thing, I believe, and then we’ll decide, hey, this is the right game for that platform, for that experience, that we want to give people.”
BlizzCon is in November, so it’s possible we may see something of the many projects Brack speaks of there. At least we hope we will.
