Imitation Saccharin said:
CantFaketheFunk said:
What makes you so sure Sams is lying?
Because for them to not realize splitting up the game three ways would generate gobs more money, and had that as at least a con or pro on some big spreadsheet, means they're stupid or lying to us.
And I don't think they're stupid.
Of course they realized it. They're not stupid.
But that doesn't mean they based the choice on it. "Okay, so, if we do the trilogy we'll be able to actually do everything we want to do with the campaign, but won't have to delay getting the multiplayer out nor will we need to make gamers wait even longer for the full thing.
As a side result, we'll make more money."
They can have realized they'll make more money and
still have it not a factor in the choice.
Imitation Saccharin said:
CantFaketheFunk said:
This is a company that has a track record of refusing to release not one but two games - Warcraft Adventures and StarCraft Ghost - because they weren't going to be good enough.
Evidence?
Er, honestly it's just something I know having followed their games closely over the years. I'm pretty sure WoWWiki has a decent explanation of Warcraft Adventures, at least. So no, I don't have any one specific source, but it's... pretty widely known if you've followed Blizzard.
Imitation Saccharin said:
CantFaketheFunk said:
Besides, it isn't like they don't already have a money-printing machine already
As Amnestic said, a business makes as much money as possible. You can never have enough.
Warcraft Adventures was practically complete by the time they canned it - at least, the expensive parts like animation and voice acting had all been finished. Given that it would have probably sold extremely well no matter how good it was, their decision to ultimately not release the title and not recoup expenses? That's pretty significant - and they didn't have Activision's pockets then, either (I'm pretty sure they didn't even have Vivendi to fund them, too.)
But they recognized that keeping their reputation was worth taking that loss.
I've told this story before, but it doesn't stop being significant.
Before Blizzcon, I was talking with an acquaintance who happened to work at Blizzard over drinks one night, and he told me about how he'd seen one of the Blizz higherups come in to the office he shared and yell at - really chew out - the other person, and they were genuinely upset.... not that they'd be losing money or anything, but honestly furious that Blizzcon attendees weren't going to have the best experience possible. Even after years with the company, he told me, he was still struck by how often *that* was the mandate - the player gets the best experience we can give them - rather than "how can we make the most money?"
Feel free to take me - or him - with a grain of salt, but talking to Blizzard staff from Mike Morhaime on down, it's something that I genuinely and truly believe. Yes, they are a corporation, and yes, their employees do have families to feed. So of course the fact that a decision will be good financially is an awesome bonus. But that isn't necessarily *why* they'd make the decision.
wilsonscrazybed said:
Seems to me like this is something they never would have done before the merger. Also, the rampant denials that they want Diablo 3 to be an MMO have me on edge as well. Perhaps they are being pressured to look for alternative forms or revenue for their games and this is what they came up with.
Well, why wouldn't they deny that they want D3 to be an MMO if they didn't want it to be an MMO?
They've said time and time again that it won't be subscription based, though whatever form the "monetization" will take is still up in the air. In all likelihood, it'll probably be something like "for 2 bucks a month you don't have to deal with adds on Battle.net" or something along those lines.
AceDiamond said:
Since every campaign release will include the full multiplayer options anyway, it stands to reason that people will be so eager for more of their Starcraft multiplayer goodness that they'll buy the first race to hit shelves then probably buy the race they actually want to play the campaign for when it comes out later.
And these aren't expansion packs, people, these are full campaigns for each race. Don't tell me that they're suddenly going to change some aspect of the last release with a new one. As far as it sounds they are 3 releases of the same game with extended campaigns. But they know full well the power of the multiplayer and thus they will be getting more money for what is essentially a fragment of a game.
And tell me again why it takes so long to make another campaign. I posit that it in fact does not and therefore such a staggered release is pointless unless...they're trying to milk the franchise
In the first Starcraft, if you wanted to play the Zerg or Protoss missions, you had to play through the Terran ones anyway.
They've said that they were always planning on doing one SC2 expansion - this is just one more game, and if the value is an expansion value, it'll be expansion price. If it's a full game value, it'll be a full game price.
They're actually doing some pretty detailed stuff with the Terran campaign (at least from what we've seen), and I wouldn't be surprised at all if they wanted to do similarly detailed - but different - things with the Zerg and Protoss ones. Hell, even if not, there's still scripting, recording, cutscenes, campaign balancing, brand-new campaign units (and corresponding models) to introduce... given how long it USUALLY takes Blizzard to make a game? It doesn't surprise me at all that they're staggering them like this.
The choice was between staggering them, or making players wait a much longer time for all three at once. They opted for the former to let players actually, y'know, play the game they've wanted to play.
