Highlights
- Blizzard has reportedly formed a new team that will make AA games based on its existing IPs.
- The move was supposedly made at Microsoft’s behest.
- The new team reportedly mostly consists of former King employees.
As a long-time Blizzard fan with countless hours spent in the magical worlds of Diablo, Overwatch, StarCraft, and Warcraft, I can’t help but feel a mix of excitement and curiosity about the latest news coming from my beloved gaming company. The report that Blizzard has formed a new team dedicated to making AA games based on their existing IPs sounds like music to my ears!
A renowned gaming industry source has reported that Blizzard Entertainment has established a new development team specifically focused on creating AA games using their existing intellectual properties. This move, it seems, was initiated by Microsoft.
Following numerous regulatory hurdles, Microsoft successfully purchased Activision Blizzard for a staggering $68.7 billion in October 2023. The longstanding CEO of this gaming titan, Bobby Kotick, stepped down in December and no immediate successor has been appointed yet. In the interim, Activision Blizzard’s senior executives now report directly to Matt Booty, who serves as Microsoft’s president for game content and studios. Apart from the leadership reshuffle, there have been no significant alterations in Activision Blizzard’s daily operations after this mega-deal, which marked the largest acquisition not only in gaming but across all technology sectors to date.
Blizzard Reportedly Forms New AA Game Team From King Staffers
Approximately ten months after the acquisition, Microsoft is reportedly taking a more active role in managing Activision Blizzard, as indicated by a recent report from Windows Central’s Jez Corden. This new report suggests that Activision Blizzard has established an internal team specifically tasked with developing AAA games under Microsoft’s guidance. The team’s primary focus will be on revitalizing existing Blizzard franchises like Diablo, Overwatch, StarCraft, and Warcraft, according to the same source. Furthermore, Corden alleges that most of this new team has been recruited from staff members at Activision Blizzard’s subsidiary King, which is renowned for its popular Candy Crush series.
It’s uncertain how big the alleged new AA development division at Activision Blizzard is. However, an analysis of LinkedIn data by Game Rant indicates that there are at least 99 employees who previously worked for King, a company still operating independently. Many of these individuals transferred from King to Activision Blizzard in July 2024, maintaining their original job titles. Since King is primarily a mobile game developer, the fact that this new team appears to be made up of people from King could suggest a focus on smartphones and tablets, considering Microsoft’s increasing interest in mobile technology.
It’s uncertain if this will truly transpire, as Corden merely verified the team’s overarching aim: to optimize Blizzard’s current franchises more effectively than Activision Blizzard did before the Microsoft takeover. Microsoft seems open to testing and trying out a range of AA projects in pursuit of this goal. However, whether these tests will lead Blizzard to create non-live-service games again after quite some time is still unknown.
In just a few months, the reported creation of a new Blizzard team comes after Microsoft closed four ZeniMax Media studios due to widespread cost reduction measures. These savings strategies within the gaming industry have led to around 2,100 job losses in 2024 for Microsoft.
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2024-08-02 18:04