20% increase in investment, no layoffs at development and concentrating on big own franchises... sounds at least better for wow than other statements i expected. even when very very small, there is hope for a better understanding of how wow should evolve.
Bobby Kotick is the scum of the Earth.
IMO, some stuff just needs to be abandoned or put on life support. HoTS, Starcraft II and Diablo 3 are a good example of games that have outlived their usefulness. D3 and Starcraft II are simply games that reached their conclusion and HoTS is a niche dead end.
They need good new blood in their games portfolio, not try and drag dying horse for another year or two before it inevitably fllps.
They need new Diablo game, new Starcraft game and hell maybe new IP too. I am personally happy they want to push Diablo forward, hopefully new game announcement soon that is not played on phone.
People saying "RIP wow" can't read. If anything, wow comes out on top with the 20% extra resources added. Also, layoffs were non-development stuff.
That's not necessarily true. They closed the HotS e-sports division, the publishing rights to Destiny were sold back to Bungie - there are probably a lot of staff leftover from those teams that are no longer required.
I don't like the direction that Blizzard is going, but these layoffs (if they end up happening to the departments mentioned) make perfect sense from a business point of view.
Sorry, but every time I see something explained like "we have record results this year, so let's fire people §§§§§" I understand why more and more people around the world loose confidence about capitalism.
This sucks badly for the individuals being laid off - but it's the right call. This is non-development staff - as a custuomer I'm happy that they're scaling down on the crazy amount of money being spent on e-sports initiatives, reducing the corporate bureaucracy and making sure the resources are spent on development.
Blizzard has been having trouble getting games and content out of the door - they're not producing enough and the quality is often questionable. Many roles, especially in technical and engineering positions are becoming more difficult and expensive to fill. They need to find the money for this somewhere. That 8% layoff isn't being used to increase dividends. It's refocusing the organization for better production of games. Will this succeed? Maybe. It requires more than shifting around budget figures - it's important that the organization has a whole is trimmed. Getting rid of corporate cruft and office politics is extremely difficult. There's a huge risk they'll fail. But this restructuring can be part of succeeding.