During a call to investors this evening, Activision-Blizzard have suggested that their next major MMO project, ‘Titan’ is undergoing changes. Blizzard boss, Mike Morhaime said the team is ‘re-nenvisioning Titan’.
The bombshell? Unlike World of Warcraft, Titan will ‘likely not be a sub-based MMORPG’. It would appear that even Blizzard have recognised that the future of the genre does not rest with a subscription based model.
Morhaime has also confirmed that team members from the project will be spread out across the studio’s other projects as a ‘new direction’ is decided. What that means is anyone’s guess, but Blizzard are set to make a major announcement in a few weeks at Gamescom. Blizzard have shown early support for next-gen systems, with a version of Diablo 3 coming to Playstation 4, as well as Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Could they be developing further products for consoles? We know for sure there is more Starcraft 2 in development, and we’re pretty sure that both Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft will be receiving new expansions in the next year.
Beyond that, who knows?
Morhaime said that he was unable to discuss Project Titan, but he did reiterate “it has not been officially announced or does it have a projected release date.”
Outside of that, the firm ended quarter 2 with $1.05 billion in revenue, compared with $1.08 billion year-over year. The firm said it earned $387 million through digital offerings, which accounted for 37% of the company’s total revenue.
World of Warcraft ended Q2 with 7.7 million subscribers, a drop from 8.3 million back in May when the firm reported its Q1 financials. Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime said to investors that the 600,000 player decline was split evenly between east and west.
“WoW continues to be the best MMORPG available and still has a long life ahead of it, Players come and go, and we recognize there is a lot we can do to make coming back an easier transition. We look forward to releasing Siege of Orgrimmar, the next update to the game in the coming weeks.”