Blizzard Jumps

One of the most successful home computer games is Blizzard’s Diablo II. It is the game engine that was re-written to become the most popular on-line game, World of Warcraft. Diablo 3 cometh? Gamers have heard rumors of a sequel for years. Diablo represents a significant intellectual property for Blizzard on par with the movie industry’s “Star Wars”. Rumors are that Blizzard as of last year had spent $60 million (US) funding a European development team to build a generic on-line game engine. Last year Blizzard said they would first launch an original or less valuable title. This appeared to be a move to make sure people liked the game engine, before applying it to a more valuable game title. This game engine is a generic set of tools to support a subscription based game that can be used for many different on-line games. This recent move to possibly by-pass a less significant title indicates that Blizzard may be facing what many software development firms have learned. You only really have a choice if you can abandon the method. Since Blizzard must spend additional money to apply the game engine to Diablo they may have come to the realization that regardless of how the game engine is received they no longer have the money to go back to the drawing board. It is much like do you leap into cold water or slowly ease in. Blizzard realized they were already in mid air.