Ah shit. Blizzard to make all franchises MMOs.

[Andy]

http://f13.net/?itemid=167

Vivendi Universal Games gave a presentation to Wall Street today. Too much to report on everything said, but the big one was:

"All Blizzard franchises will become MMOGs."

All. They claim they have a model now to develop an MMOG in 3 years for $50 million. WoW cost 50 million euros and took 4 1/2 years.

They have bifurcated the MMOG market into two parts: long session games (more than two hours per session) and short session games (less than two hour sessions.) They will also be rolling out a bunch of short session games under the Sierra Online brand. An example is FreeStyle, a pick-up basketball online game scheduled for 2007 release. No details on pricing model for the short session games.

Shiznitz sent this in this morning and all I can say is good for them. Apparently splitting what will probably end up as 8-10 million customers (maybe more, asian gamers are unpredictable about things like STARCRAFT) across 3 games isn't a concern to them. They're lucky stock brokers know nothing about video games.

Please tell me this shitty website is dumb and doesn't know what the fuck they are talking about.

I love WoW, but man, I don't want a Blizzard MMO sweatshop.

[sleeve]

*cue Empire March theme*

[Andy]

StarCraft 2 pls.

[Diff-chan]

[StriderKyo]

I have no plans to make time in my life for any MMOs, but I'll be damned if a Diablo MMO wouldn't be incredibly tempting.

[Eightbitbreaks]

Sweet. Rock N Roll Racing, Lost Vikings, and Blackthorne MMOs.

[kingoffighters]

Morphix's haul for 2006?

[sethsez]

Blizzard sucks.

[Ryan]

StarCraft 2 pls.

No, Blizzard can't beat Starcraft.

[napalm]

Just because games will become MMO does not mean they will all be RPGs. I fail to see how this isn't good news. You can take anything, say a basketball game, and make it MMO, which could mean something as simple as walking around a city to pick someone to play ball with.