Many blamed piracy for this. At a time when the gaming industry was moving towards ever more and more intrusive DRM for PC games, Valve came out with a different approach, and proposed the idea that many pirates are underserved customers. They launched Steam, which has been wildly successful- and with no stupid DRM that harms your computer.
Blizzard is just copying Valve's move here. They want Battlenet 2.0 to be (ideally) a better version of Steam.
And Steam has no LAN.
Are you serious... I'm gonna take it you've not played on steam... or you wouldn't have just said that... Steam auth with the server, and then you play over lan... Where did you get the idea it was ever any different...?
TBH I've only played L4D over steam, and it has no LAN.
Many blamed piracy for this. At a time when the gaming industry was moving towards ever more and more intrusive DRM for PC games, Valve came out with a different approach, and proposed the idea that many pirates are underserved customers. They launched Steam, which has been wildly successful- and with no stupid DRM that harms your computer.
Blizzard is just copying Valve's move here. They want Battlenet 2.0 to be (ideally) a better version of Steam.
And Steam has no LAN.
Are you serious... I'm gonna take it you've not played on steam... or you wouldn't have just said that... Steam auth with the server, and then you play over lan... Where did you get the idea it was ever any different...?
TBH I've only played L4D over steam, and it has no LAN.
It does too have Lan me and my friends do it all the time...
No one really knows whats going on, apart from the people running the Project Bnet 2.0 and the project Starcraft 2. There is far more to it than just random quotes and phrases thrown out of peoples mouths these days.
I'm not surprised, angry or frustrated. I almost don't care, if beta comes this year I will be pleasantly surprised. I still enjoy playing SC1 and watching pro games, so that will sustain me for a long time still.
Also it would appear that it's not only SC2 that's being delayed till 2010, there are others as well.
On August 07 2009 07:21 blade55555 wrote: While I knew it would be pushed back and I hate it no doubt, people need to realize the irony is that most game companies just throw games out asap (EA being a huge one). People tell them to take more time on their games but when a company takes more time to make it actually good (Blizzard) people get pist. There is no pleasing the fan base. Blizzard has it right even though its painful to wait there is nothing better then a polished, good game rather then a could have been good game but bugs ruined it to hell.
No matter what, there are always people who whine like a little girl, it makes themself feel special.
Personally I don't mind the delay, it gives them time to work on features that they PROMISED, which is a good thing.
When it comes to development, you can only pick 2 out of 3, quality, timeliness and cheap. Since Blizzard is exist to make money, and they know the importance of quality, they would have to sacrifice speed.
For the idiot who pointed out how atom bomb was made faster than SC2, he should read about the manhattan project details. The amount of resources they put in it such as man power and money is enormous. They obviously sarcrifice the cost so they can end the war quickly.
Omg.... Maybe Im not cynical enough, I had no clue this was coming especially with all the "we're in the final stretch" crap. I mean I know that blizzard only releases perfect games, but the game is supposedly perfect its just bnet 2.0 thats slowing this down. Oh well, at least the original starcraft has some life left in it.
I'm not surprised that they pushed the date further, but overall, it's not a big deal for me as long as the good is good. If the game turns out to be on par of SC1, or better, then the wait was well worth it. Until then, I'll pick up Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and play that along with SC and CS 1.6 lol
On August 07 2009 06:11 SWOLE wrote: 1997 delay announcement: + Show Spoiler +
As many of you know, we have been working day and night to get Starcraft into your hands by this Christmas. This has included 30 hour shifts, sleeping on our office floors, and living on stale pizza. The progress on Starcraft has been phenomenal, and it is looking like all of our efforts are going to be well worth it. Unfortunately, it has become clear to us that in order to bring you the best game possible, we are not going to be able to release the game before the end of January.
In case you don't remember, the original 1996 debut of Starcraft looked something like this: http://www.blizzard.com/star/bigpix/oldsc.htm We just had a world premiere at the Wizards of the Coast Game Center and you can see how far it has come: http://www.blizzard.com/star/bigpix/scnow.htm The reaction of everyone there was very positive, but we don't want to release Starcraft until it becomes the classic that we know it can be. With this extra time we will be, among other things, refining the play balance of the game, and honing the computer AI.
We read our e-mail, we watch the forums and newsgroups, and we know that you want this game to come out NOW. We also want to get the game into your hands as soon as possible, but we want to make sure that Starcraft is everything you expect from Blizzard. Starcraft is a project that has been two years in the making. It would be an injustice to you and the development team to ship the game before it is truly ready.
Thank you for your continued support and interest in Starcraft. We are dedicated to creating the best games in the world for the world's best gamers.
"Thank you, Kristen and thank you for joining us this afternoon. July 9th marked our one-year anniversary as Activision Blizzard. As a combined company, we’ve delivered better-than-expected financial performance for the fourth consecutive quarter. We are in a very unique position in our industry. We have the breadth of product portfolio and resources to deliver our short-term commitments of earnings growth and margin expansion and the ability to shift products to future release dates to increase our long-term financial returns and to ensure our product quality objectives are met.
Today we are reaffirming our full-year non-GAAP EPS outlook and we expect to achieve record non-GAAP operating margins of 26%. We also expect to deliver these results despite a weaker-than-expected retail environment and a number of strategic decisions that will have an impact on our short-term revenue outlook but which will strengthen our competitive advantage for the long-term.
Our margins are the highest of any third-party publisher and we expect our growth initiatives will continue to provide long-term opportunities. Our 17-year track record of growth is evidence that our long-term focus is working and has created significant shareholder value.
Over the past few months, we’ve made a number of strategic decisions that reflect our commitment to product quality and the investments required to capture large new market opportunities. With this in mind, we are repositioning the release of Blizzard Entertainment’s Starcraft 2 into the first half of 2010 to coincide with the launch of our new Battlenet game service which will be ready early next year.
A true online destination platform, Battlenet will become the foundation for connecting the tens of millions of members of the Blizzard community in a social gaming network across all Blizzard’s future games. This will begin with World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2.
To put Battlenet into context, it will be a service similar to Xbox Live and it will leverage the technologies, infrastructure, and expertise that Blizzard has developed over the last decade in multi-player play and social networking. And as Mike Morhaime will discuss later in the call, there is no better opportunity to launch this strategic initiative than through the launch of Starcraft 2.
The title is likely to be the most anticipated groundbreaking realtime strategy game of all time and the Battlenet platform is an investment in the future of gaming and an opportunity that we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on.
Today we have more people in more countries playing online games than any other company and we intend to continue our leadership position through franchises like Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2, as well as Activision Publishing’s Call of Duty franchise.
Another great area of opportunity for us is China. We continue to strengthen our position there with Blizzard Entertainment’s partnership with Netease, the premier China based videogame company. This is a long-term investment with a very capable and committed partner. Netease has already made significant investments in upgrading the technical infrastructure of the World of Warcraft service. In fact, from a quality of hardware and network perspective, China is our most advanced geography in technical capability. Mike will also give you more details about our progress in China later in the call.
This flexibility to make long-term investments without compromising near-term results puts us in an enviable position. We’re not preoccupied with dramatic restructurings, burdensome investments to develop online game making capabilities, or the significant risks and expenses associated with entering new geographies like China or Korea. This gives us an exceptionally deep advantage and is the basis for our industry-leading operating margins today and provides us the ability to expand operating margins in the future.
Our cultural focus on thrift is driving further cost reductions throughout our business and our incredibly strong balance sheet has enabled us to repurchase more than $650 million worth of shares since we began our repurchase program. Today we announced that our board of directors has authorized an additional $250 million to our buy-back program to $1.25 billion, further illustrating our long-term focus and commitment to providing superior returns to our shareholders.
I thought it would be useful to remind you of the five key advantages that will enable us to provide superior returns to our shareholders in the future.
First, our focus on a select number of proven franchises and genres, our strong marketing and sales programs, and our ability to find ways to broaden our franchises through innovative business models, new genres, and new markets. Our leading online capability and first mover advantage and access to fast-growing Asian markets, our industry-leading operational capability and the most talented group of employees by far in our sector. And finally, our exceptional balance sheet, which is the result of our continued focus on margin expansion, operational excellence, and rigorous cost control.
It has taken 18 years to create these competitive advantages but today we are better positioned than any of our competitors to capitalize on the long-term opportunities afforded by our industry and we will continue exploring new market opportunities and business models that should enable us to continue growing our operating margins and delivering long-term value to our shareholders as we have over the last 18 years."
Well I can see your point. You want to show us how they made a masterpiece for 2 years with a month and a half delay and how they are going to fail with a game that has been developed for over 5 years and has been delayed for at least 1 year so far.
On August 07 2009 07:21 blade55555 wrote: While I knew it would be pushed back and I hate it no doubt, people need to realize the irony is that most game companies just throw games out asap (EA being a huge one). People tell them to take more time on their games but when a company takes more time to make it actually good (Blizzard) people get pist. There is no pleasing the fan base. Blizzard has it right even though its painful to wait there is nothing better then a polished, good game rather then a could have been good game but bugs ruined it to hell.
No matter what, there are always people who whine like a little girl, it makes themself feel special.
Personally I don't mind the delay, it gives them time to work on features that they PROMISED, which is a good thing.
When it comes to development, you can only pick 2 out of 3, quality, timeliness and cheap. Since Blizzard is exist to make money, and they know the importance of quality, they would have to sacrifice speed.
For the idiot who pointed out how atom bomb was made faster than SC2, he should read about the manhattan project details. The amount of resources they put in it such as man power and money is enormous. They obviously sarcrifice the cost so they can end the war quickly.
I guess you missed my other points in which there have been countless great games that were developed in under 5 years. SC2 is a RTS, arguably the easiest genre to create. It should never take a RTS game 6-7 years from inception to beta. Period.
Let's just show some examples here shall we. Square-Enix developed FFXIV (Their new MMO) in 4 years and will be releasing it mid next year. This puts it on about a 5 year dev timeline. You see, S-E didn't announce it until this E-3, a year before the planned and anticipated release. That is how you operate. Stringing people along for nearly 3 years after all ready being in development for 4 years just shows a lack of operational planning and a severe lack of time sensibilities.
Now, why on earth wasn't BNET2.0 started 3-4 years ago? You seriously can't tell me that Battle.Net takes as long or nearly as long as FFXIV. So, the only logical conclusion you come up with is that Blizzard is fucking inept and dilly dallied around for years and then decided oh fuck, we need to start working on BNET2.0. They screwed the damn pooch. I'm sick and tired of the fanboyism that runs rampant thats counter-intuitive to logic.
Here's a few nice little INGAME screenshot of FFXIV.