Hearthstone must be doing really good on mobile for Blizzard because the company is considering more mobile game releases, with deeper gameplay, as their next step in their plan to expand business. Blizzard is celebrating its 25th anniversary this week, having released quite a few games in that time but the biggest wins for them have been Warcraft (including World of Warcraft), Starcraft, Diablo, and Hearthstone.
In an interview with three executives from Blizzard (president and co-founder Michael Morhaime, senior vice president and co-founder Frank Pearce, and senior vice president Chris Metzen), some interesting details came out about the company’s future plans. One interesting point that came out of it is that Blizzard isn’t considering Virtual Reality as one of the next big steps for the company to take. This doesn’t mean that down the road Blizzard won’t jump into Virtual Reality, as all three executives are watching that platform’s growth, but as it stands right now, Blizzard isn’t considering it.
Everybody’s talking about VR and wearing funny helmets. Culturally, we’re interested, and we’re watching. How rad would it be to run around in World of Warcraft and see it 1-to-1? That does appear to be the next horizon. But we’re kind of watching. It’s possible that other companies will take more tentative steps and plant their flags. I don’t think we’re quite ready to conquer all that yet. – Senior Vice President Chris Metzen
The platform all three find more exciting right now happens to be mobile. As with any plans Blizzard has, outside of saying that mobile is an exciting platform and one the company is looking at for future plans heavily, no details were revealed about what those development plans actually include. The only real details mentioned was that the real-time strategy genre, something Blizzard has a lot of experience in, would definitely be something they consider for mobile.
Two other items Blizzard is looking at for mobile happen to be procedurally created content and user-created content. The latter is something that would technically be a first for the company. Both are meant to make it so any mobile released in the future would have deeper gameplay and an ongoing stream of content for it so that they don’t get old.
Whatever the case may be, Blizzard will be taking a little while for their next mobile release. They know there is plenty of potential in mobile still, but figuring out which way to go with it will need to take some time. What type of game do you think Blizzard should release onto mobile next? An open-world MMORPG such as World of Warcraft, an RTS game like Starcraft, something like Diablo, or something completely different? Let us know in the comments below.
Website Referenced: VenturBeat
