A fresh report from Windows Central has landed today that sheds light on a brand-new team that's supposedly been formed at Blizzard Entertainment. According to Jez Corden's reporting, a new team has been built at the Diablo developer "to work on smaller 'AA' games based on existing IP".
What that IP will turn out to be remains to be seen, but apparently, Microsoft "is keen to leverage its huge back catalog" acquired alongside the Blizzard studio. The fact that this team will supposedly work in a double-A capacity perhaps suggests that it will build smaller projects over at Microsoft HQ.
To that end, we're also not sure about platforms here. The report claims that a bunch of King developers — the third pillar of ABK that makes Candy Crush — have been pulled over to this studio, with mobile the potential target platform for these smaller AA titles.
"We're told Microsoft and Activision's new team within Blizzard is tasked to work on "AA" smaller games based on existing franchises within the Blizzard universes. Given King's mobile expertise, it's possible that these will be mobile games aimed to support Xbox's planned mobile gaming store for iOS and Android — although we're not entirely sure that they'll be restricted specifically to mobile."
However, that's not been confirmed, and Corden was also keen to remind us of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's comments this week about a console, PC and mobile approach for Xbox. Here's hoping that if this report is true, Xbox and PC are still firmly in the plans for this Blizzard team and its smaller projects.
As usual, this is just a report for the time being; we haven't heard anything official from Xbox or its teams on this Blizzard news. Of course, if we hear anything more concrete on the matter we'll be sure to inform you here at Pure Xbox.
What are your initial thoughts on this report? Tell us how you feel about the info down below.
[source windowscentral.com]
Comments 18
This will hopefully yield some great games. Blizzard IP have so much awesome lore that they can make into great experiences. Really looking forward to seeing what they announce in a year or two, I imagine it's going to be a shorter development time so we won't be waiting 4+ year's for these.
The team's first project, despite not being announced yet nor development having been started, has been delayed.
Yea like a third person StarCraft please
If they're smart, they've been looking at what Riot is doing with League of Legends and thought, "We should do that." But also like, make a new Warcraft pls
Greeeat, $70 billion, 2 years waiting for Xbox to stop playing Ace Attorney IRL and start making games, and what do we get? Mobile games. For $20/mo. "Next year"(TM)
Blizzard team to Nadella: "Do you not have phones?"
AA is the new quadruple A …
Blizzard has some of the best IPs in the entire industry, very interesting things can come out of here, for example, a StarCraft survival horror, or a StarCraft action game, well, anything from the StarCraft universe would be great xD
So mimicking Hollywood and doing nothing original. I guess I'm really out of touch with what the majority of gamers want/expect.
Hopefully that means single-player games based on World of Warcraft which emphasize specific character classes and historical event in the franchise's lore.
That’s cool and not a bad idea, bet let me know when we get a big AAA quality experience as well.
@NEStalgia
Blizzard team to Nadella: "Do you not have phones?
Nadela to Blizzard team: "Maybe next time tell us before, we get rid of our mobile phone hardware business 😀???
@Pabpictu @TheSimulator Maybe they will update Starcraft Ghost and finally release it for the current Gen consoles.
@101Force hahahahaha😂 don’t get your hopes up. it’ll be $tory content for live $ervice released in dlc updates
This is a solid move if true. Kinda reminds me of how Riot tried expanding the reach of their pre-existing IP under the Riot Forge branding.
TheSimulator wrote:
Yes, or perhaps some kind of Warcraft adventure game?
We really need a chart to help navigate what different amounts of "A" mean when describing a game.
I could go for some good AA experiences on lesser known titles. Lost Vikings 3 would be amazing.
The 'third' new Studio that I know of since MS took over in Oct 2023.
First, Infinity Ward announced they opened a New Studio in Austin, Tx, to create new and innovative CoD games and the technology powering them...
Second, Activision announced they opened a New Studio in Poland, Elsewhere Studios, to create a new Narrative Driven AAA game (not CoD).
And now Blizzard has new team to work on smaller budget games - just hope we don't have to wait another 5-6yrs though until we see what these Studio's have been working on...
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