On February 10 2011 08:54 SirPirate wrote:
I wasn't in on the call, but the interwebs is saying no Blizzard releases for 2011. Anyone hear this in the call?

Pretty much. They said if D3 doesn't launch this year (and it most likely won't) there will be no title releases for 2011. With that in mind they expect 2 title launches in 2012.

Ighox

Norway580 Posts

February 10 2011 00:30 GMT

#43

On February 10 2011 08:54 SirPirate wrote:
I wasn't in on the call, but the interwebs is saying no Blizzard releases for 2011. Anyone hear this in the call?

They never said that, they just said THERE MIGHT NOT BE any releases in 2011 and if there were no releases they would have to release at least two games by the end of 2012.
Everyone just likes to turn that into "QQ NO DIABLO 3 THIS YEAR!".

On February 10 2011 08:25 Ownos wrote:
I'd expect D3 most likely and maybe HOTS. Didn't Blizzard say it'd be about a year for HOTS? So HOTS is due around August 2011.

I think they said the expansion release eta was ~19 months after SC2 release, so at least within Q2 2012.
But I'd expect it this year to be honest, they probably have some bnet improvements in there that they want before D3 launch and if they don't release anything this year they pretty much have to release both D3/HOTS early next year and I'm sure they do want some time between those two releases.
(Or the other way around, D3 this year, HOTS early next year.)

SmoKim

Denmark10305 Posts

February 10 2011 20:24 GMT

#44

On February 10 2011 07:28 xBillehx wrote:

Show nested quote +

The next call will be when the 2011 Q1 results are out, so at most 2-3 months. The last few years' Q1 calls have been around the first week of May.

in general it's just great to see big numbers for PC games these dark times

that ain't and mmo(i mean WoW only) or some generic FPS nr 2282

Seronei

Sweden991 Posts

February 10 2011 20:29 GMT

#45

On February 10 2011 09:30 Ighox wrote:

I think they said the expansion release eta was ~19 months after SC2 release, so at least within Q2 2012.
But I'd expect it this year to be honest, they probably have some bnet improvements in there that they want before D3 launch and if they don't release anything this year they pretty much have to release both D3/HOTS early next year and I'm sure they do want some time between those two releases.
(Or the other way around, D3 this year, HOTS early next year.)

I actually suspect that D3 will be released 2013 since I can't imagine a WoW expansion not being released 2012, but I guess they said "at least" so we might get both.

btlyger

United States470 Posts

February 10 2011 20:48 GMT

#46

To all the people complaining about the "minimum of 2 titles" in the next 2 years look back on earlier in Blizzard history. Until recently they were releasing 3-4 titles every 2 years, and occasionally more. I think the main issue was they released no games in 2005-2006.

Blizzard has been working on their games for a long time, and a lot of quality goes into them. A lot of those "2 titles" will be expansion packs, and diablo3 has been in development for well over 3 years. Blizzard is still putting effort into their games, and to be honest they are actually really trying to please their fans. Getting chat channels so quickly (while I think they should have been at launch) is just one sign of them paying attention to us, and all of these map updates and remakes as well as minor balance tweaks are awesome.

I've got to say, now that I've stopped playing WoW and just focus on SC2 and eventually D3 I've started to fall in love with Blizzard all over again <33

So yeah, be EXCITED that they are releasing more games and know that they are still the company we all fell in love with 10 years ago.

Arco

United States2090 Posts

February 10 2011 20:52 GMT

#47

On February 10 2011 07:22 annul wrote:
"minimum of 2 titles"

SC2 expansion #1 (end of 2011) & Diablo3 (end of 2012)

easy peasy.

Fixed

Gimmie that Diablo 3!

RevRich

United States218 Posts

February 10 2011 20:58 GMT

#48

Diablo 3 for this upcoming Christmas would be amazing, too bad its probably more likely to be Christmas 2012

Sqq

Norway2023 Posts

February 10 2011 21:00 GMT

#49

Releasing 2 games by 2 years is np for Blizzard. They also said that there will be "a few expansions" for D3, which means they have so many expansions they can release for so many games, that it will be impossible to not release a game every year.

GGTeMpLaR

United States7226 Posts

February 10 2011 21:04 GMT

#50

diablo 3 beta news in 3 months?

I now have something to wait for after march's DA2//STW2

SolonTLG

United States299 Posts

February 10 2011 21:10 GMT

#51

Other highlights from the Activision conference call not mentioned above:

-Losses for the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31 narrowed to $233 million, or 20 cents a share, from $286 million, or 23 cents a share during the same period a year earlier. Again, this is for the entire corporation, and not for the Blizzard business unit in particular.

-Activision is ending development of the Guitar Hero franchise. The corporate SEC filing (here) says that the corporation is firing 500 employees that work on the title.

-Call of Duty: Black Ops has hit over $1 billion in worldwide sales.

(Note: Much of this information comes from the Wall Street Journal article "For Activision, Hit 'Call of Duty' Not Enough to Save 'Guitar Hero'" published Feb. 10th, 2011. Starcraft 2 is not mentioned in the article.)

Finally, the market did not like Activision's corporate results, with the stock price down almost 10% in trading today.

When the quarterly report 10-Q (or 10-K) is filed, I will search through it for specific Blizzard business unit information, as I did with last 10-Qs report (here).