Microsoft and Activision Reportedly Forms New Team at Blizzard to Work on Smaller AA Games - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 September 2024 / 6,343 Views
Microsoft and Activision have reportedly approved the formation of a new team at Blizzard that is mainly comprised of employees from King, according to sources who spoke with Jez Corden at Windows Central.
This new team will be working on "AA smaller games based on existing franchises within the Blizzard universes" like Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, and Overwatch.
King is best known for working on mobile games, so it is possible this new team will be developing games for mobile platforms. We do know Xbox is working on a mobile games store for iOS and Android.
Sources claim Microsoft is open to exploring and experimenting with smaller smaller teams that are also part of the larger Xbox organization in order to find success.
One recent concern in gaming in recent years is the increasing cost of AAA games.
Corden via Twitter added, "Microsoft wants its Xbox studios to collaborate more closely and support each other, similarly to Nintendo and well, how Blizzard has often operated. The Coalition has also been known to be supporting teams like Undead Labs, etc."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Probably the closest possibility of getting a new Warcraft RTS lol
Yeah, pretty much every RTS I've played that's released over the past 10-15 years has felt like AA. Dawn of War 2/3, Age of Empires 3/4, Ashes of Singularity, Battlefleet Gothica, Halo Wars1/2. All were lower budget feeling in proportion to their era, compared to things like Red Alert 2, Warcraft 2, Homeworld 1/2 which all felt higher budget at the time.
Hmm i wonder wheres the bungie firing 200 news are
What's AA an acronym for?
It's not. It began as an investment rating. Many industries still use it that way. Distributors used to assign a rating to a game to indicate how well they expected it to sell because most retailers had no idea. At some point, the general public said, "oh, this must mean budget," and took over the definition.
"Candy Crush: Diablo edition"
Maybe this is the type of Team to bring back some old favourites like the Bear & Bird
Cool! Looking forwards to the results.
They should have already done this in all studios lol. Microsoft's moves are in line with many of the things I imagined. The company should make the following moves:
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Mobile store;
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Create small teams within studios to make low-budget games with a release window of between 2 and 3 years, thus guaranteeing content for Game Pass, a revenue stream that can finance AAA games from the studio itself and, finally, training new talents with advice from a veteran;
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Create new plans for Game Pass (a family and friends plan would be great);
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Create a plan just for XCloud, with this, it can integrate console, PC, mobile and other platforms;
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Set the goal of making XCloud run games in 4K and 60FPS, with the new technologies it can reach 4K and 120FPS... I don't believe that anything above that will bring a substantial improvement for users;
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Opening up its ecosystem so that users can have the option of purchasing games through Steam, Epic, GOG or even the XBox/Windows Store, allowing users to play games from their library through cloud gaming;
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Buying or opening mobile studios, as these are low-budget games with a high revenue stream when implemented well. This would reduce the pressure to generate revenue for studios that make games for PC and consoles. In addition, it could be another guarantee to preserve jobs or even create new ones;
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Keeping the console while cloud gaming technology is still maturing;
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Creating a team to develop its own graphics engine, thus being able to standardize it, facilitating training and even commercialization. If they can create a graphics engine that is fully integrated with AI to maximize process efficiency and minimize costs, that would be great.
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Using AI to detect bugs, low-performance parts of the game and to optimize for different hardware;
My opinion is that Microsoft is not willing to try to increase sales of the XBox console, as it would be too much work for a hardware that may be replaced in the near future. The big question will be... "to play XBox games, do I need a PC or subscribe to game pass or XCloud? One thing is a fact... there will be exclusive games for the XBox ecosystem.
