Blizzard Entertainment has pulled the plug on the development of console titles, announcing their intentions in an official statement. Up till now, stories were circulating among the industry that Blizzard was seriously planning on publishing game console titles.
But according to Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard, those plans are on indefinite hold. "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.” Blizzard also stated that it was planning “to strengthen its current development efforts by refocusing key members of its console team on other projects."
Blizzard, who has always been PC intensive in its game development, evidently was testing the waters of console game production but decided that the investment was not worth the risk. To shore up its portfolio of PC games, Blizzard is in search for new programming talent for its successful PC RTS (real time strategy) games Command and Conquer, Warcraft III and Rise of Legends-a genre that has brought tremendous success to the company.
Is the pull back from console games a permanent situation? Blizzard left itself an open back door by saying that "possible future console plans [will be] revealed at a later date.”
