Blizzard: "We have many of our best developers now working on new mobile titles across all our IP's"

I don't buy it. I wish I could agree that the mobile platform has something to offer, but I have never been drawn to it, and the games I have played have functioned (at best) like a fun pick up and play game for short session (mainly poops and killing time in the airport)

I don't know anyone who games on mobile phones. I have never heard of anyone who prefers mobile to other platforms. Certainly not Blizzard fans. And if it's the case that this consumer exist, then it's still an outlier.

This is for the sake of money. That's alright, but man at least tell us you're attracted to the market end the potential money you're able to make.

All these attempts at trying to convey your passion for these projects seem far from authentic.

At the press panel of Diablo Immortal, they literally tried to sell us the idea of the mobile platform, because "touch screen controls allows you to run in one direction, but shoot in another"... What?

This turn in strategy is so depressing. Inevitable I suppose. Good thing I'm invested; they will make big bucks on this shit.

There's no way they're making a new Lost Vikings game. "All IPs" is misleading!

Bizazedo said:

The illuminating answer he gave that most of their devs have switched from playing desktop games to mobile phones is what got me. That means their internal culture has changed and explains so much about why they were so caught offguard at Blizzcon.

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If you read Mumper's Twitter it was kinda obvious.

shinobi602 said:

Holy overreactions Batman.

Blizzard knows the PC/console centric crowd is what's gotten them to this point of success in their history. They're not abandoning it anytime soon. Mobile is just another avenue to generate revenue they want to tap into even more.

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Yeah, no kidding. "We've got our best people on it." is the world's most BS PR saying ever.

China is a huge source of income for Blizzard, so naturally talking up mobile and their upcoming mobile game from a Chinese developer makes sense.

Well lets hope they announce stuff developed internally rather than developed through NetEase and a clear reskin

Most people are fine with Hearth stone

BazookaXp said:

I hate mobile gaming. This is where we shall part blizzard, I hope to see you again with Diablo 4.

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Same. No anger or ranting, just no interest until they release something I care for again.

This makes me sad. :(

But as usual, other devs will fill the blanks that Blizzard leaves behind. Grim Dawn and Path of Exile are amazing!

Maneil99 said:

Stop talking. This isn't the time to say this.

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They just don't know when to stop digging do they? I guess the company owners and shareholders just couldn't resist finding that buried treasure chest of mobile microtransactions.

Awful timing

steviejd1 said:

It's the "many of our best developers" part that makes it sound like they are shifting to mobile though.

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It's just PR speak to basically give the idea that these mobile titles will be up to their standards of quality, that's all.

They bring us Warcraft 3:Reforged. So I'm good.

All hail Blizzard.

lol bragging about their best developers working on mobile to get that money...how bout your triple A gaming? arent your best devs there?

Mobile is the future so not surprised. I hope they don't abandon PCs tho.

--R said:

Now this is gatekeeping.

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Is not liking something gatekeeping now?

I guess i'm gatekeeping Nickelback from y'all.

Can't wait to see the PR spin on this.

Is it really their best developers, or just hiring companies that already make shitty mobile clones of their games?

This just seems...kinda bullshit though. They're still doing WoW, Warcraft and Overwatch after all.

Anyway, do mobile games actually make that much money? I realize that some do obviously, but...is a mobile Diablo really going to do that for them?

Cool. If they make a good game then I'll play it. Haven't found many mobile games that I like, but Hearthstone is fun and Blizzard knows what its doing.

(These games better have portrait mode support, should be standard.)

That is something that makes business sense coming from Blizzard. They are going to earn a lot of money.

In other completely unrelated news, i ll keep many of my best of my money (all of them) for non mobile games.

PurpleMoustache said:

I see no difference in this from, say, Nintendo making Animal Crossing Pocket Camp between mainline Animal Crossing games. Keeps the name in the zeitgeist, gives diehards some extra stuff, and teams are smaller/outsourced instead of internal studios working on it.

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You clearly didn't read. They have some of their best internal devs making this stuff. Nothing like Nintendo.

QUOTE="shinobi602, post: 14710862, member: 36"]It's just PR speak to basically give the idea that these mobile titles will be up to their standards of quality, that's all.[/QUOTE]

Bad PR then. Mobile quality and sales have no correlation.

XandBosch said:

This just seems...kinda bullshit though.

Do mobile games actually make that much money? I realize that some do obviously, but...is a mobile Diablo really going to do that for them?

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A diablo mobile in the chinese market is going to be massive. ARPGs are incredibly popular and if the game is actually half decent it will be very big.

Classic Blizzard, always late to the party. They were late with Warcraft movie and now they are late on mobile bandwagon.

shinobi602 said:

Holy overreactions Batman.

Blizzard knows the PC/console centric crowd is what's gotten them to this point of success in their history. They're not abandoning it anytime soon. Mobile is just another avenue to generate revenue they want to tap into even more.

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As people have mentioned, many of the creative forces behind their successful games have left the company. Before it seemed like they were just ready to retire but now I get a sense of them leaving the company because they saw where the their investors were pushing them to become and it just wasn't worth it for them in the end.

But alas, we'll have to wait and see but this news definitely doesn't instill confidence in the narrative that Blizzard has lost touch with it's core fanbase.

shinobi602 said:

Holy overreactions Batman.

Blizzard knows the PC/console centric crowd is what's gotten them to this point of success in their history. They're not abandoning it anytime soon. Mobile is just another avenue to generate revenue they want to tap into even more.

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But why not just say that? Especially after the most recent events.

How hard is it to say they are working on mobile games, while still focusing on their core base (if that's the case)?

Scarface said:

A diablo mobile in the chinese market is going to be massive. ARPGs are incredibly popular and if the game is actually half decent it will be very big.

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Ah fair enough, wasn't aware of that.

It just seems odd. If devs at blizzard are more into mobile games than PC games, why the hell are they working at Blizzard?

Is the passion for making games like Diablo and Warcraft completely gone? They'd rather chase Angry Bird kinda stuff?

touchmykatamari said:

There's no way they're making a new Lost Vikings game. "All IPs" is misleading!

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That's a game I can actually see sort of working on mobile

touchmykatamari said:

There's no way they're making a new Lost Vikings game. "All IPs" is misleading!

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heroes of the storm mobile, bam done

Actually with them suddenly deciding for some insane reason to focus on HOTS lore lately I think it'd be really cool if they made a spinoff game in that setting. Not a mobile MOBA, that'd be terrible, but something more suited to the platform.

There's a lot they could do on mobile and if they really do have in-house development on it then maybe that's something to look forward to. Or maybe it's just outsourced reskins. But until we know for sure I don't see why I should start crying about how Blizzard is dead and has been going downhill since Warcraft 2 or whatever.

edit: Oh, I missed Nirolak's other thread saying they have other games 100% in-house.

shinobi602 said:

It's just PR speak to basically give the idea that these mobile titles will be up to their standards of quality, that's all.

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Then they could just say that the mobile games will have the Blizzard quality and polish to them. Saying that their best developers are working on mobile games gives the wrong idea completely, especially added to "we used to play on desktop but play many hours on mobile now".

steviejd1 said:

It's the "many of our best developers" part that makes it sound like they are shifting to mobile though.

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This is typical PR talk. It's not like any company ever says "we have our mediocre developers on this project". They want people to have faith the mobile games will be good.

steviejd1 said:

It's the "many of our best developers" part that makes it sound like they are shifting to mobile though.

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Blizzard isn't going to say their developers in general aren't the best developers. People are reading too much into it because they want to.

saenima said:

Is not liking something gatekeeping now?

I guess i'm gatekeeping Nickelback from y'all.

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Yeah, why do devs do things I don't like?. They should only do things I like.

touchmykatamari said:

There's no way they're making a new Lost Vikings game. "All IPs" is misleading!

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The lack of a new Lost Vikings is another missed opportunity by Blizz. A few years ago when retro sprite-based platformers were hot again would have been the perfect time for a new LV.

SuperBattleGenius said:

As people have mentioned, many of the creative forces behind their successful games have left the company. Before it seemed like they were just ready to retire but now I get a sense of them leaving the company because they saw where the their investors were pushing them to become and it just wasn't worth it for them in the end.

But alas, we'll have to wait and see but this news definitely doesn't instill confidence in the narrative that Blizzard has lost touch with it's core fanbase.

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I'm honestly not really a big Blizzard fan as I haven't played too many of their games but haven't they still put out core titles for their fanbase? Overwatch just came out a couple years ago, they're overhauling Warcraft 3, and we know they're deep into the next mainline Diablo. There's just opportunity to seize revenue from mobile.

Pizza_King said:

But why not just say that? Especially after the most recent events.

How hard is it to say they are working on mobile games, while still focusing on their core base?

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I agree if it were up to me, I'd always couple announcements seen as targeting 'casual' audiences along with something for the core base. I think they believed Warcraft 3: Reforged would do just that. It's mostly down to a timing thing.

Why would you say this right now?

XandBosch said:

Ah fair enough, wasn't aware of that.

It just seems odd. If devs at blizzard are more into mobile games than PC games, why the hell are they working at Blizzard?

Is the passion for making games like Diablo and Warcraft completely gone? They'd rather chase Angry Bird kinda stuff?

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Well it seems like the company is going to shift towards/into mobile gaming. To what extent, nobody knows. But the money is there and they want some.

I think the passion has been gone for a while. Their latest Diablo offerings are evidence of that. I don't play WoW but apparently its in a bad state and has been for a while.

Surprised they waited so long considering how successful hearthstone is for them. Even Nintendo has more mobile games than them now.

Pizza_King said:

But why not just say that? Especially after the most recent events.

How hard is it to say they are working on mobile games, while still focusing on their core base (if that's the case)?

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But why do they need to come out and say that? Just because they announced one mobile-exclusive game doesn't mean they're shifting the entire company to it.

I think they expect their own fans to be smarter than that.

Just what the fans want to hear right now!!

Like, sure, make your mobile games. But doubling down after the backlash isn't a good idea.

shinobi602 said:

I agree if it were up to me, I'd always couple announcements seen as targeting 'casual' audiences along with something for the core base. I think they believed Warcraft 3: Reforged would do just that. It's mostly down to a timing thing.

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With the most recent dumpster fire, one would think Blizz would word anything regarding mobile extremely carefully, instead of continuing to add to the concerns. Especially with how badly their stock tanked the other day.

Ugh... Blizzard

Scarface said:

Well it seems like the company is going to shift towards/into mobile gaming. To what extent, nobody knows. But the money is there and they want some.

I think the passion has been gone for a while. Their latest Diablo offerings are evidence of that. I don't play WoW but apparently its in a bad state and has been for a while.

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Yeah, it's a damn shame.

I can only hope they turn this around with some better news sometime soon, but it really does seem like the glory days are behind them. If nothing else, the remasters are only serving as reminders to people of who they once were as developers. I know a ton of people still play WoW and a ton of others love Overwatch, but being that neither of those are really for me, it's just a damn shame.

I'm still considering double dipping on Diablo 3 for Switch as it's better than nothing and is probably still one of the best dungeon crawlers out there, but it's not at all the same as peak Diablo 2. I guess if nothing else it'd show support that the market is still there for those types of games...I don't know.

Just a major bummer.

Market leader takes base audience for granted in favor of the rising, comparatively more profitable direction (how much more profit do they really need is the question, the answer is of course "all of it"). This will only mean anything if a massive number of that audience moves on (doubtful), and that's squarely on how much the quality will suffer from that "shift" from the "best developers" (probable but hard to say just yet).

Renna Hazel said:

This is typical PR talk. It's not like any company ever says "we have our mediocre developers on this project". They want people to have faith the mobile games will be good.

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Tbm24 said:

Blizzard isn't going to say their developers in general aren't the best developers. People are reading too much into it because they want to.

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It's combined with "we have shifted from playing on desktops to playing many hours on mobile. That does send a certain message out there and it's not reading too much into it at all imo. It seems like it's a deliberate shift to make mobile an important pillar of their business.

HarryDemeanor said:

But why do they need to come out and say that? Just because they announced one mobile-exclusive game doesn't mean they're shifting the entire company to it.

I think they expect their own fans to be smarter than that.

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Did you watch the video in the OP? This isn't ONE mobile game we're talking about here. They very much needed to clarify what I stated. Especially after the disaster that was Blizzcon.

worst timeline

always online Diablo 3 PC and now putting their best devs on mobile diablo/others, they sure don't give 2 smurfs about me .... and it's a'ight :3

Dig up, Blizzard.

shinobi602 said:

Holy overreactions Batman.

Blizzard knows the PC/console centric crowd is what's gotten them to this point of success in their history. They're not abandoning it anytime soon. Mobile is just another avenue to generate revenue they want to tap into even more.

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Yeah, for real. Don't fault them for looking into it. Wouldn't surprise me if some of their in dev stuff is starting like Hearthstone did.