Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey says that despite the promise of holiday success for games like DJ Hero and Tony Hawk: Ride, Activision's year end could see some snags -- chief among them the increasing likelihood that Starcraft II won't make this calendar year.
Although Blizzard's not yet pinned a specific release date for the game, it's maintained a 2009 window. But Starcraft II lead designer recently told consumer weblog Kotaku that the team plans to have a beta that will last "four to six months," leading Hickey to conclude: "We find it increasingly probably that the game will be released in [Activision's] fiscal '10 period."
This week, Blizzard Entertainment dropped both 'StarCraft: Remastered' and 'StarCraft II Campaign Collection' into PC Game Pass.
Hopefully these get released on Switch and Playstation, along with Age of Empires. There’s a severe lack of good RTS games on both those platforms.
Happy spooky season to those who celebrate! We have a collection of scary games for you to enjoy with Game Pass, while hiding under the blankets (or maybe that’s just how I play). And if you want to do something slightly less scary, we have a whole list of games for you to start pre-installing including more day one additions like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and more! Let’s get to the games.
• South Park: The Fractured but Whole (Cloud, Console, and PC) – October 16
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (Cloud, Console, and PC) – October 25
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (Cloud) – October 25
Game Pass Ultimate
• Call of Duty: Warzone (Cloud) – October 25
Game Pass Ultimate
• Ashen (Cloud, Console, and PC) – October 29
• Dead Island 2 (PC) – October 31
• StarCraft: Remastered (PC) – November 5
• StarCraft II: Campaign Collection (PC) – November 5
Let the COD on GamePass experiment begin!
I would think their quarterly revenue will take a hit compared to a year ago, but will maybe make up for it throughout the year as the monthly GP subs keep coming in
Was up with call of duty man?
I downloaded cod on gamepass and for some reason I cannot access the game.
just curious what version? There are some that you can pre-load, but they wont work until their release date later this month.
I have to redownload it again for the 3rd time to check.
I ended up just deleting it to make room for other games after the second time.
It was on Xbox game pass, I didn’t know there was other versions. I just downloaded everything, but sadly I couldn’t even access the game. Maybe 3rd time the charm. I’ll download it again.
On xbox there is the last gen/current gen versions pc though you could also get a xbox version.
When that new forza first came out for one day they had the xbox version on the pc store i was like ? what it was odd.
On xbox you can easily download the one version of a game instead of the series version so you run into issues on your series console.
Because a game won’t run after I download it??
Man your kids must hate your @ss if that’s how you think.
It's going to be very interesting to follow up on how the new entry of CoD will perform at the box office, player numbers and distribution of Xbox, PC and PS versions this year.
I got excited thinking they ported StarCraft to consoles but it's just the PC version. Also, I thought Starcraft 2 was already free to play.
Jason Hall, currently an indie developer and former Blizzard employee, has been sharing some really interesting stories from his long career in the industry for a while now. Some of them are truly insightful, while others may seem depressing.
I’m a little shocked that StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty sold only around 6 million copies. The original StarCraft did over 11 million. Maybe Blizzard was too leisurely in releasing StarCraft 2? Starcraft 2 came out 12 years after it’s predecessor.
Im surprised too. Starcraft was still a huge name in 2010. It was kinda the only new RTS around and other genres like MOBAs hadn't really kicked off yet. I do remember at the time sentiment around the game was
pretty angry the game was being split into 3 but I doubt that would have impacted sales to that degree
For a long time I believed StarCraft II sold on par or better than its predecessor. There was so much hype for the game. Plus it had a pretty strong E-Sports scene for a few years.
Myself and half a dozen friends all bought StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and played it religiously for a full year. While I bought the expansions, most of my friends did not. RPGs seem to be a generally low selling genre.
I'm not shocked at all. This was an early example of Blizzard being greedy. Instead of releasing a complete experience, splitting Starcraft 2 in 3 parts so it could make us purchase it 3 times if we wanted to know the whole story and play story mode with the other races.
I originally had that stance. However, Wings of Liberty, was just as long, if not longer than StarCraft 1. The expansions were of decent length too and added a good amount of additional content.
and people wonder why we are having mtx in everything. i blame the people who actual buy them.
It's interesting he used Brazil as an example of the importance of regional pricing. Nowadays many companies on Steam are setting their prices in Brazil as high as, if not more than, their price in USA. I simply refused to buy a few games when I noticed that's the case.
Good. Compromise away.
it seems Blizzard isn't being pushed by Activision to meet any deadlines which is good
Might happened but this is the same idiot who said Sony was planning to remove the blu-ray drive out of the PS3. It's amazing that websites are still quoting him. In fact its surprising he still has a job.
You know what'd be funny? If Sony cut the PS3 price the week after COD6 came out. *chuckles*