Now, this does not guarantee that Blizzard will not be releasing Diablo this year. What it means is that they are not sure if it will be and therefore, do not want to include it in their current financial plans. They did say, however, that "if a title is not released this year, that they would be releasing two titles in 2012".
Separately, someone asked why no revenue from Diablo was included. The response was basically that it is still unknown on its release date.
After the initial information, Mike Morhaime spoke about Blizzard specifically. He stated that they were very excited about Diablo III and that development continues to move forward. Unfortunately, we did not get anything specific about any dates or its progress. However, more information about Diablo III and its beta will be discussed at the next conference call in May.
Mike Morhaime also answered a question about Diablo's progress and a possible release date. His response was that they were still very excited about Diablo. The reason for the mystery behind any dates is that they are waiting for initial responses from Beta before they announce any dates. Basically, if beta goes well, it would push their plans forward and if there were multiple things they want to change, it would push the date back.
On a more speculative conclusion of this, a summer beta would be logical given that it will be talked about in the next conference call. June 28th continues to be an important date for Diablo and may follow this trend with a possible Beta start date. This would put a six month Beta finishing at the end of the year in December. This late date may be why they did not include Diablo in their financial plan for this year. The success or issues with Beta may make this date very tangible for this year or the next. Again, they did not say that Diablo will not be released this year. However, an early 2012 release is now looking more realistic according to this new information.
We can all look forward, from this point, to the next conference call in May when a date for Beta should be announced giving us a more accurate guess of the release date.
*update*
Official Blizzard Quote:
I want to make sure it’s clear that what was stated on the investor conference call was this: Blizzard has not announced a release date for its next global release. IF we don’t release a major title in 2011, then for planning purposes we would expect to launch 2 titles in 2012.
This has been misreported/misinterpreted as an announced release schedule for 2011 and 2012, which it is not. While we’re pleased with the progress of Diablo III, we have not announced a release date for it or for any other upcoming Blizzard game. We’re currently contacting a number of outlets to request that they make the appropriate corrections in order to avoid any further confusion.
What Bashiok is telling us is that we shouldn't rule out a 2011 release, but we shouldn't be too excited about having the game this year either.
In no way do I believe Blizzard should announce their release dates earlier than they do. But I do hope nobody will even attempt to convince me that Blizzard actually underestimated the amount of work to be done by 2-3 years.
All in all I find this a bit poor =)
Show me the last time Blizzard gave us a positive release surprise (positive being sooner than expected).
This is god-awful news, and I'm sure heads are rolling at Blizzard. If Bliz has no new releases in 2011, shareholders are gonna dump the stock like it's hot. After-hours trading the stock is down 7.2%.
To re-iterate what I said in the battle.net forums:
Blizzard's arrogant dismissal of the importance of time-to-market never ceases to astound me. They want to confuse us by saying : More time causes more quality. Not necessarily true. Better development and quality assurance models improve quality. Iteration is ONE way to achieve quality. Planning and coherent development vision is another.
I'm exceptionally disappointed, in any case.
You mean like the years and years they had with WoW as their only new game? I don't see any reason why they would do so much more poorly with a early 2012 release and WoW subscription fees from 12 million people.
Yes, and planning and coherent development vision and iteration is the best way. Blizzard has developed games like this for 20 years now. Why in the world would they start doing any differently?
Of course hes uncertain about D3's release date. What hes not uncertain about is the beta release. They know when its coming out, they just don't know how much work the feedback is going to lead to. He seemed to say that if there were not huge problems after the beta it would be late 2011, while if there were more problems it would be early 2012. I don't see how that can be bad.
What other information can you say about a beta? Even if there are any other good reasons to mention it, an announcement (as in some solid timeframe or date as to when it'll be out) would still be well in the range of possibilities.
You're not dead yet 2011! Right...?
No. You will be proven wrong! December 31st!!!!!!! YOU WILL BE WRONG!!!
Exactly my point. I don't see any evidence of coherent planning and vision. They seem only to use iteration. Just look at how many times resource systems and skills have been re-designed.
Very few if any software companies in the world don't know when their products are going to be released. They set a deadline and they meet that deadline. They tell their customers what that deadline is. They have internal "stretch" deadlines, and externally facing "committed" deadlines beyond which they do not pass. This is BASIC project management. Why does Blizzard feel so above this process? Obviously it's outrageous to their customer base.
I'll wait. And when the game comes i'll be getting it immediately and will have fun with it for a good half decade to say the least
Anything released after that date will technically be part of their 2012 "financial plans".
They should have given us a timeframe for the beta, a between "this" and "that" would have received a lot better feedback than "fuck you guys nothing new here dev is slow as usual don't get your hopes up for 2011 as it is looking to not be the case."
This is basically what they told us. I love being optimistic but it looks as if 2012 is become more likely the case. And with blizzard you know it will happen. They will receive feedback and take everything and revamp it cause people said it didn't look good enough or it didn't flow well enough even though it works fine. Then we'll have to wait another 5-6 months till everything's ready and thats if they don't have some other idea they wanna throw in there to "make it a better game" cause then it'll be another year after 2011 and forget it no one will care by then.
I'm hoping for a June 28th beta release although I HIGHLY doubt it. My worst case scenario is beta announced at Blizzcon 2011, and my most likely scenario is the beta will be released around Blizzcon maybe on the day of or the day after so that after all that Blizzard news they can give us all the chance to play. Then with that I can see a June 28th 2012 release, and if it gets delayed I can see a December or October 2012 release. If it is a major setback like a serious engine malfunction I could see them halting everything and making this game come out after Titan is announced well into development.
False, considering this conference call was entitled:
Activision Blizzard Fourth Quarter Calendar 2010, you may want to check your particulars there. This was the report for Fiscal Year 2010 Q4, which means, of course, that Q42011 doesn't end until Feb 2012.
Edit: I think I just replied to your same post on battle.net with the same post. sorry to be the double harbinger of bad news.
Basically you opt-in your Battle.net account, submit your system specs, and, if you're lucky, you get chosen for a key. So no, you don't have to pay or own anything (besides a computer, obviously, but it seems like you've probably got that covered), but it's not exactly for all users either. But anyone who wants in has an opportunity to get in.
In my mind thats not at all what they gave us. What they gave us is "In 3 months we'll tell you when the beta will come out" and they've previously given us "The beta will go for 6 months before release." The combination of those two pieces of information leads to a rough estimate of when the game could come out. Far from a fuck you. And I can more than live with an early 2012 release, which seems to be one of two possible scenarios (the other being late 2011).
Says who? Optimistic people expected a 2011 release, and Blizzard has a tendency to dissapoint in that case. The stockholders still have WoW, SC2, and all of Activision to buoy their stocks in the meantime. Part of being a stockholder is dealing with possible dissapointments, and as far as dissapointments go, a Q1 2012 release isn't all that bad if you were expecting it to be Q4 2011, which still isn't out of the picture anyways.
So? How can you claim to know the thinking behind each decision? Just because you only see the iteration part of the planning/vision/iteration combo doesn't mean the other two aren't there. I would understand your complaints if this was any other company (except maybe Valve) but Blizzard is known for dissapointing when it comes to release dates and amazing when it comes to the end results. This conference call gave us the closest thing to a release date for Diablo 3. Any other conceptions of when the beta or game should be released was based on small hints and a possibly true leak, and if you're disappointed that those speculations ended up being not true then thats understandable but by no means does it mean that Blizzard is a bad company.
Right. And very few software companies get revenues from the largest subscription based game in the world or consistently release games of the same quality as Blizzard. Blizzard feels so above this process because they are so above most video game developers. Not in terms of consistent releases, but certainly in terms of quality.
He said that he wasn't saying that 2011 is out of the picture, but he said that it all depends on the feedback from the beta. Obviously he didn't give any exact dates.
How is information about the beta in 3 months so much worse? Again, they probably have at least the month down for the beta at this point if they plan on talking about the beta in any detail in 3 months, and if they didn't plan on talking about the beta in detail in 3 months they wouldn't have said anything about it during this conference call(and again, theres not much to say about a beta other than when its coming out).