Proud mother Blizzard is ‘incubating’ several new gaming projects

By Jon Martindale August 4, 2017

Blizzard — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Blizzard Entertainment is currently working away on a number of new game prototypes built around entirely new properties. Describing them as currently “incubating,” at the company, Blizzard hasn’t confirmed whether all or any will eventually see the light of day, but did state that none are based on existing properties like Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch.

This week saw Blizzard reveal its earnings for the past quarter and along with confirming that it had as many as 400 million active players across its and Activision titles over the past three months, it also detailed some new games it had in the works. Company co-founder Mike Morhaime talked about them in vague terms during a discussion of the earnings report, though he did state that most staff remained focused on existing franchises (via Gamespot).

However, that’s not to say that star talent isn’t working on anything new. Morhaime reminded those listening in to the call that fellow Blizzard co-founder, Allen Adham, had come back to the Blizzard fold last year in order to head up teams working on the incubating projects.

Describing the intellectual property pipeline at Blizzard as better than ever, Morhaime said that the company was also looking into alternative platforms like mobile for future developments.

“We now have multiple dedicated incubation teams that are being led by some of our most experienced game designers at Blizzard,” Morhaime said. “I should say that creating new, Blizzard-quality games on any platform will take time. And as we’ve shown in the past, we’re not going to release any games that we don’t feel live up to our expectations or those of our players.”

These won’t be niche ideas though. Much like Blizzard’s other large franchises, it will be looking to capture big audiences with new projects, with Morhaime saying that not only would new developments have wide appeal, but that they would be projects the developers were passionate about.

This is an ethos that we’ve seen play out with Blizzard in the past. Its expected successor MMO to World of Warcraft, Titan, was canceled after many years in development when Blizzard felt it wasn’t up to the standard of the company’s other games.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Computing Coordinator

Jon Martindale is the Evergreen Coordinator for Computing, overseeing a team of writers addressing all the latest how to…

Gaming

With PVE mode canceled, Overwatch 2 just isn’t the game for me

Two squads of heroes clash in an Overwatch 2 trailer.

When Overwatch 2 was first announced, I had good reason to be excited. I always enjoyed the series’ first installment, but I always wished there was more to it. As someone who’s not a skilled competitive player, I wanted more ways to interact with the shooter that didn’t just involve me going on big losing streaks. So I was elated when Blizzard announced it would bring a full PVE mode to the sequel. Finally, I’d have a way to get invested in the world and characters of Overwatch and progress through a solo campaign while doing it.

It turns out that dream was a fantasy. In a recent interview with Gamespot, game director Aaron Keller revealed that plans for the mode had been scrapped. Overwatch 2 would still get some story content bundled in with new seasons, but the grand vision for a Hero mode with its own skill trees was no more. Not only that, but plans had changed a year and a half ago -- something that was never communicated to fans when the game’s multiplayer component launched last October.

Gaming

Why cloud gaming is the linchpin in Microsoft’s troubled Activision Blizzard acqusition

Key art showing multiple devices playing games via the cloud.

The United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) delivered a shocker this week when it blocked Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard on Wednesday. While a lot of focus on Microsoft’s fight was centered around whether or not the acquisition would give Xbox consoles an unfair advantage over PlayStation consoles, what ultimately decided it was a much smaller market: cloud gaming.
The idea of being able to stream the game you’re playing from the cloud has existed for well over a decade. Cloud gaming’s relevance to the video game industry has only grown over the past several years thanks to both failed and successful efforts from big tech companies like Google, Amazon, and, most importantly, Microsoft. Still, cloud gaming is considered relatively niche, with Activision Blizzard Bobby Kotick calling it "inconsequential" in an interview with Bloomberg and UCL Associate Profession Joost Rietveld saying it’s not a distinct market in a submission to the CMA.
Despite those pleas, the CMA claims that cloud gaming is a “nascent market” and that “already strong incumbent in this market even stronger” in its 418-page report on the matter. Following the CMA’s decision on Wednesday, I spoke to several different analysts to find more clarity about how big Microsoft is in the cloud gaming space and why the CMA should feel compelled to intervene. While experts mostly side with Microsoft over the CMA on this decision, one greater truth emerged from these discussions. Whether one thinks cloud gaming is relevant to this acquisition or not, this emergent style of gaming has reached a point of no return where it'll be instrumental to the video game industry going forward.
Microsoft, king of cloud gaming
Cloud gaming may sound like a niche within the industry, but that's not entirely accurate. BrandFinance Managing Director Laurence Newell tells Digital Trends that “cloud-based services account for over 70% of Microsoft’s brand value, amounting to a staggering $137.5 billion.” That’s quite an eye-catching number that understandably would raise a regulator's alarm bells. However, Newell admits that gaming only makes up 8.5% of Microsoft’s revenue, and cloud gaming is an even smaller amount of that slice.
Despite its relatively small impact on the wider company, most of the experts I spoke to agreed that Microsoft has emerged as a cloud gaming leader thanks to its compatibility with a large segment of the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate library. Conversely, Activision Blizzard has had almost no cloud gaming presence outside of one Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice port on Google Stadia before that service’s shutdown. If it were to be acquired, it is inevitable that more Activision Blizzard games would likely come to cloud-based gaming services.

Despite the shutdown of Google Stadia and the relatively small brand value received from cloud gaming compared to the rest of the company, the CMA still points out in the press release about its decision that “monthly active users in the U.K. more than tripled from the start of 2021 to the end of 2022. It is forecast to be worth up to 11 billion British pounds globally and 1 billion pounds in the U.K. by 2026.” Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the UCL School of Management Joost Rietveld, who has also been a consultant for Microsoft during its acquisition process, challenges the notion that cloud gaming as a whole is a single market.
Instead, Rietveld splits it into four categories, placing Xbox Game Pass into a category called “cloud gaming as a feature,” which is when it’s “offered as part of a consumer-facing distribution platform” or “included within a bigger bundle of services provided by the platformer.” Under Rietveld’s view, services like Nvidia GeForce Now, Ubitius, and EE -- all of whom Microsoft has made individual deals to bring Activision Blizzard and Xbox Game Studios titles to -- fall into different categories and thus shouldn’t be considered or directly compared to Xbox Game Pass. No matter how they’re categorized now, the real question mark looming over the technology is its future growth, according to Omdia Senior Principal Games Analyst Steve Bailey.
“Will it remain a niche additional service or become the gaming platform of the future?” Bailey asks in his statement to Digital Trends. “Our projection is that cloud gaming is growing rapidly (revenue should more than double by 2026), but it’s still a long way from taking over the games market, so it remains arguable either way.”
“Arguable” stands out as the keyword to me here. Like any emergent technology, we’re heavily debating the positives and negatives of cloud gaming, specifically through the lens of this acquisition. But what exactly is it that the CMA sees in Microsoft that worries them?
The CMA’s problem with Microsoft
“The CMA’s argument is not that acquiring Activision Blizzard would allow Microsoft to dominate the console market as a whole, where Sony and Nintendo have strong positions relative to Xbox, but only that it would help it to achieve a dominant position in cloud gaming specifically,” Bailey tells Digital Trends. “Microsoft and Activision Blizzard will likely argue that this is disproportionate, given the relatively small scale of the cloud gaming market.”

Gaming

Move over, Wordle: The New York Times has a new puzzle game

top tech stories of the week 7 24 2015 new york times starbucks deal

The New York Times has introduced the next title coming to its Games catalog following Wordle's continued success -- and it's all about math. Digits has players adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing numbers. You can play its beta for free online right now.
In Digits, players are presented with a target number that they need to match. Players are given six numbers and have the ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide them to get as close to the target as they can. Not every number needs to be used, though, so this game should put your math skills to the test as you combine numbers and try to make the right equations to get as close to the target number as possible.

Players will get a five-star rating if they match the target number exactly, a three-star rating if they get within 10 of the target, and a one-star rating if they can get within 25 of the target number. Currently, players are also able to access five different puzzles with increasingly larger numbers as well. I solved today's puzzle and found it to be an enjoyable number-based game that should appeal to inquisitive minds that like puzzle games such as Threes or other The New York Times titles like Wordle and Spelling Bee.
In an article unveiling Digits and detailing The New York Time Games team's process to game development, The Times says the team will use this free beta to fix bugs and assess if it's worth moving into a more active development phase "where the game is coded and the designs are finalized." So play Digits while you can, as The New York Times may move on from the project if it doesn't get the response it is hoping for.
Digits' beta is available to play for free now on The New York Times Games' website