Vivendi To Wall Street: Prepare For MMOGalanche
Posted Wednesday, June 14th, 2006 at 12:25 am by MJG
F13 received word from a source with the trust-inspiring codename “Shiznitz” that Vivendi, owners of Blizzard, gave a presentation to Wall Street. In this presentation, it was supposedly said that thanks to World of Warcraft, Vivendi has a cunning plan that will allow them to produce MMOGs of similar quality for $50 million and a three-year dev cycle.
And they’re going to do it with all Blizzard franchises. Which really means Starcraft and Diablo.
Blizzard, on the other hand, denies vehemently that they are working on any such project.
Analysis: If you want to work on World of Starcraft, send your application to Vivendi.
June 14th, 2006 at 3:47 am
Good God. Vivendi sounds proud of the fact that they have a model to make games like widgets on an assembly line. Following the EA path to success I suppose?
“They’re lucky stock brokers know nothing about video games.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself. They certainly aren’t endearing me with a message to the effect “all MMO’s, all the time!”.
June 14th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
Great news for the people who play 16 copies of WoW at once: variety added to your heartless powergaming!
Man, as soon as someone encapsulates and refines a game mechanic/genre to the point where you can design from a template, it seems like it’s time to move on (creatively, at least. But even the business side becomes a case of diminishing returns as you try to mine every possible MMO theme and every demographic with it).
Still, at least it will force others to make MMOGs which aren’t so obviously in the WoW vein.
Pfftt… who am I kidding? Investors and publishers can’t see past WoW’s success to ever understand that people crave a bit of variety.
Bwahaha… who am I kidding? The public shun new directions in MMO design like I shun formulaic MMOs.