Blizzard Is "Not Milking StarCraft II"

[Shawn Zipay]

Paul Sams, the COO of Blizzard, gave a statement to VideoGamer.com that addresses many of the "concerns" fans have over how the company is apparently milking StarCraft II with a three-part release.

Here is what he had to say:

"The fact of the matter is, it's absolutely, positively untrue about us trying to stretch it out and milk it. People think that it was a monetary driven decision. I can absolutely, positively tell you, with 100 per cent certainty, that that was not part of the conversation. I guarantee it. I give my word. There was never, ever a conversation where we said, 'let's do this because we're going to make more money'. I guarantee it. As a matter of fact the sole reason we did it was because we thought it was going to be a better experience. Anybody that says otherwise is not correct. It is absolutely not what we did it for.

"We're doing just fine. The customers, the players of Blizzard games have rewarded us handsomely for making the right decisions on gameplay. We don't ship games before they're done and we try to provide the best experience that we possibly can because that's our priority. We shipped a ton of games that have been great but we've also cancelled a ton of games that every other company that I know would have shipped. We don't compromise on quality, and so it was a quality driven decision. It's absolutely not a monetary decision. That's absolutely not true."

Source

[RocketChild]

Re: Blizzard Is "Not Milking StarCraft II"

I'll actually take the side they are not 'milking' with a 3-part series. I say that, and then since it is in text here, someone could come back and say "Rocket you were wrong!" But really, I think they are playing it well. You never see this done because companies are always under pressure to cut features to ship. Look at how Microsoft goes about things. Or even many of the games we like where we are shown features that just never make it in the end product.

I'm very curious though how it will all play out in the multi player version. That is where we'll see the true meddle of Blizzard and whether Activision is truly trying to run their products in the ground.

[[Expletive Deleted]]

Re: Blizzard Is "Not Milking StarCraft II"

The main problem I see with splitting the game is how it will fragment the community. We've all seen it before, from Diablo 2: LOD to BF2 with its "Booster Packs." Any time you splinter a game into pieces and sell them separately you will see people who have myriad combinations of the pieces.
My main fear is that SC2 and Diablo 3 go the route of Hellgate: London. That game lasted just over a year and a big cause of its demise was the fragmentation of the community by various means.