wraggster
November 12th, 2018, 20:38
Blizzard messed up its introduction of Diablo Immortal. Wow, there's a smoking hot take for you. The Blizzcon keynote that managed to provoke a massive fan backlash and knocked millions off Activision Blizzard's stock market valuation was ill-judged. Hold the presses!
But the crucial twist buried in there is that Blizzard's error was not, as its fans might claim, in its actual product strategy. Nor was it even in its choice of venue, as some commentators have suggested. Rather, I'd argue that Diablo Immortal is absolutely the right product, being announced in absolutely the right venue. The errors were merely down to stage management and presentation.
Rather than looking at the stage management that Blizzard got wrong, then, I'd like to think for a moment about what Blizzard got right. For around a decade, we've had a peculiar situation where mobile games have existed as a world parallel to, but separate from, PC and console gaming. As mobile games' commercial importance has grown - eventually rising to the point where by most measures the mobile sector is a bigger market than PC and console combined - the majority of companies have recognized that they desperately need to be present and relevant in this market.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-11-09-blizzard-acknowledges-the-mobile-reality
But the crucial twist buried in there is that Blizzard's error was not, as its fans might claim, in its actual product strategy. Nor was it even in its choice of venue, as some commentators have suggested. Rather, I'd argue that Diablo Immortal is absolutely the right product, being announced in absolutely the right venue. The errors were merely down to stage management and presentation.
Rather than looking at the stage management that Blizzard got wrong, then, I'd like to think for a moment about what Blizzard got right. For around a decade, we've had a peculiar situation where mobile games have existed as a world parallel to, but separate from, PC and console gaming. As mobile games' commercial importance has grown - eventually rising to the point where by most measures the mobile sector is a bigger market than PC and console combined - the majority of companies have recognized that they desperately need to be present and relevant in this market.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-11-09-blizzard-acknowledges-the-mobile-reality