"It's official. You won't be playing
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty this year, as Blizzard has moved the release date of the real-time strategy game to the "first half of 2010." No, they never dated it; but they have now.
Activision Blizzard's reason for the delay of
Starcraft II is reportedly tied to the relaunch of its upgraded Battle.net service, which handles multiplayer for all things Blizzard. In a statement to the Blizzard community, the developer writes "Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game."
Blizzard calls the new Battle.net an "integral part of the
Starcraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward." Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said during an investor call today that the new iteration of Battle.net will likely be ready "early next year.""
(source:
Kotaku)
Because graphic is everything, right?
Tell that to the company who makes around 150millions$/month with this game only with subscription fees... No where as important? For them, it is kinda important I guess.
10k wouldnt do anything, they make over 150 million dollars a month off wow only. whats 10k compared to that? And why the hell would give them more money.
Yes they said that. Its not different than Starcraft and Brood War, really, more campaigns, new units... I don't see whats wrong with new units. Balance issues? Lets all have 2 units per race and balance the game then. More units in 2 expansions would definitively help make things fresh. Unlike the horrible C&C3, when they add stuff, they plan on balancing them properly later if they turn out broken.
I think that if the only reason that SCII is being delayed right now is because of the new Battle.net version not being ready, I think its release would move in tandem with SCII's delay since they both need to work around the Battle.net features.
I'd say their profitability comes directly from their development process.
It's never a good business concept to attempt to make the consumer pay for your development changes. A game should be priced at it's expected market value and no more. If people knew that Blizz increased the cost of games because they chose to increase their own internal costs, I would assume most people would NOT like that.
Sure I'd like D3 quicker. But a buggy first release is sometimes enough to kill a game entirely, even with fixes coming within a month or two.
I 100% agree with you about the fact that a company shouldn't have their customers to pay for development changes.
But just a question, what the 'expected market value' for a video game? Some people pay 70-80$ for a game like Halo Wars(only a recvent example) on xbox on the release date... If 80$ is the market value of that kind of games, I'd pay over 150$ for almost any Blizzard's game... I mean, of course 150$ is a lot(too much maybe?), but if we compare the prices of other recent releases on the market, Blizzard's games could be a lot more expensive for the quality they are.
I'm not saying that they should make their games more expensive, I'm just saying that it's hard to set a 'market value' for a video game, since every game is designed differently, and doesn't take the same development budget, etc...
This is an important point also. I saw a few games lately(best example? Age of Conan) that were really promising, but were released while they were still in a 'beta test state' and it ruined the experience of a lot of players, who simply stopped playing after the free month they had with the game.
Now that starcraft is delayed,they will definitely delay diablo,then only GOD knows when D3
will be released,and by then the heat would have DIED DOWN.....And diablo will not get good response.......DAMN BLIZZARD!!!!!
You gotta be sad in lots of ways in life, if you look at everything without logic and just expect the worse anyway.
The Starcraft II delay will not affect other game releases. Please see here for more information. And please take a chill pill and cut down on the unnecessary bolding and excess punctuation, it makes your post a bit annoying to read
As the others said, the Starcraft 2 delay will not affect the other Blizzard titles.... Oh, and umm, if you please look over there *points to pic of hot, naked girl*, and um... just forget that I'm holding a syringe filled with the proper meds to knock you out. Ummm... Yeah, that would be great. Just turn around and look and it will be over soon, I promise.
But anyway. If anything this delay should be better for the D3 release because then battle.net will be out for a while and 'hopefully' stable by then...because we all know how blizzard is with new launches based on experience with WoW expansions and other things the like.
I hope it wont delay all current productions.
Even if they work on it for everyday with more staff from SC2(really unlikely as the game is said to come out in 2010) they won't get it done. That's just Blizzard folks. Quality games
You're not exaggerating and I completely agree with you, but I'm gonna throw in my ten cents here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/StarCraft-Blizzard-PC-Game-LAN,8527.html#
This is why Starcraft II is being delayed... And I'd bet a month's salary on it. And, wait for it, It's a good thing - depends on how you look at it.
Starcraft II is enjoyed the most over a LAN connection, true? Now, blizz wants to counter piracy, what do they do? Remove LAN capabilities. But that causes the biggest uproar since the trilogy was announced! So blizzard has stepped back and said, "ok, we'll give you lan, but first you have to authenticate it on BNET."
We know blizz don't use DRM so they'll have to develop a tech that isn't quite DRM. That's what pushed the game to 2010... Agreed?
The good part of it is - at least Starcraft 2 gets to suffer at the cost of BNET. All the problems and ideas will be sorted out thanks to SC2.
Diablo 3 might just have a smoother development thanks to SC2 being the guinea pig of BNET 2.
Source for above.