Activision Blizzard´s Strong Announcements After Microsoft´s Acquisition

 

Activision Blizzard Inc., the new company acquired by Microsoft Corp., has announced lots of new upcoming during the Blizzcon event this week.

The company announced Diablo IV's first expansion: Vessel of Hatred, a new cooperative team game mode in Hearthstone along with a new expansion named Showdown in the Badlands, a few new features on Overwatch 2, but the biggest amount of announcements were on the Warcraft franchise. After the releases of Diablo IV and Overwatch 2 during this year, the company already anticipated the biggest amount of additions would come on this franchise, which has always been the biggest one in terms of profits since its first release in 2004.

First, the company released a new mobile game called Warcraft Rumble, inspired by World of Warcraft gameplay, which has always been the main video game within the franchise. Warcraft Rumble is expected to increase the saga´s value in the long term by extending its gamer base to the mobile platform while increasing the brand value of the franchise. This strategy has outstanding potential due to the fact that mobile is the most profitable platform in the industry at present and many video game sagas such as Call of Duty, Mario, or Pokémon are also attracting new gamers through it.

Next, they announced three new expansions for World of Warcraft, which is very uncommon due to the franchise being used to only reveal the next video game launch, but this time they have decided to overdeliver to the current gamer base of its strongest video game under Blizzard´s studio. Warcraft´s director Chris Metzen mentioned they will do their best to accelerate the velocity with which they release new content from now on, and this can be interpreted as further investment from Microsoft Gaming in the future. The feedback from the gamer community has been better than ever before, and the first of the three new expansions is coming during the next year.

For Warcraft Classic, another video game within the franchise based on remastering past content from World of Warcraft periodically, they announced two new releases: Warcraft Cataclysm, the next expansion gamers already expected to be released, and Warcraft Classic Season of Discovery, which will break the traditional transition in Warcraft Classic by remastering old content in an experimental way with new gameplay and content. From my perspective, this has been a very smart and strategic move from Blizzard since it will provide the company with lots of feedback and ideas without any risk on implementations they might decide to test in this video game. They can get lots of innovative ideas without any risk in experiments and then implement them in the rest of Warcraft video games.

All in all, the fact this video game has stayed profitable and successful since 2004 shows the company is capable of renovating the content much better than most of the other sagas in the industry. Everything indicates World of Warcraft will become one of the main projects in which Microsoft Gaming will drive more resources, and they might even extend to other industries such as the cinema industry, in which Blizzard already released a film inspired by the World of Warcraft universe in 2016 with profitable results. The community has been asking for a new film in recent years, but there has not been any announcement yet. Personally, after playing the video game, I know the video game content has strong potential to win important awards. The video game offers content similar to Lord of the Rings with dwarves, elves, and orcs, which has been widely proven successful and perceived as very attractive in the cinema industry, and after several content expansions, the video game has 3 to 5 strong storylines capable of winning those awards such as the Lich King (in my humble opinion after having played the video game for several years and knowing the video game has been one of the most successful ones in the industry and widely popular even for people who have not even played it). In case they get to win the most valuable rewards in the cinema industry, the Warcraft saga value can become much more profitable in the gaming industry, and this is why I think Blizzard is very likely to pursue this challenge once more with the support of Microsoft Gaming.