Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime says the merger with Activision has given the studio the capability to move to console development pretty much whenever it wants, but there’s no great hurry to do so.
Morhaime told GamesIndustry that he’s not concerned about the possibility of another company being the first to become “the lead MMO provider on consoles,” saying that being first isn’t nearly as important as the quality of the games themselves. “I think that it comes down to games, so I’m not too worried about being first to make a claim or first to take a market share,” he said.
“Actually Blizzard has rarely been the first to create a genre, unless you consider Diablo a new genre, nobody said that at the time, they all said it wasn’t new,” Morhaime continued. “For us we’re looking for what is the next thing, what is the next step, what is the next evolution and I think that it’s not really dependent on platform.”
And while Blizzard has achieved phenomenal levels of success as a PC publisher, Morhaime added that its partnership with powerhouse publisher Activision will greatly facilitate an inevitable entry into the console market. “Activision will have a strong business on consoles so whenever Blizzard decides to go and enter the console market we have this huge infrastructure of people that is already successful in the console business, so I don’t think we’re losing anything,” he said.
