Analyst: StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm likely delayed to 2013
In preparation for Activision Blizzard's Q1 earnings report on Thursday, Cowan & Company analyst Doug Creutz expects Blizzard may delay StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm to 2013.
In anticipation of Activision Blizzard's Q1 earnings report later this week, Cowan & Company analyst Doug Creutz said he expects Blizzard may delay StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm to 2013. While that may be bad news for consumers, the good news for the company is that he projects Diablo 3 sales to be much better than originally forecast.
Creutz said in a report that "Typically, Blizzard puts its new titles into beta for 3-6 months before they are officially released. With only 5 months left in the year, while it is still possible that Swarm could make the fiscal year, we are now assuming it ships in FY13." The sequel, a followup to StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty's Terran campaign released in late 2010, follows the Zerg and its queen Kerrigan.
Creutz said the news isn't all bad for Blizzard, as he is projecting Diablo 3's worldwide sales to hit eight million units, up 60 percent from the original forecast of five million. The game went on sale on May 15 and sold 3.5 million copies on the first day.
Blizzard also just announced September 25 as the release date for its World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria.
For Activision, Creutz predicts that the dollar figure from the Call of Duty settlement with former Infinity Ward heads Vincent Zampella and Jason West could be in the "tens of millions." He believes, however, that investors will probably ignore the settlement's impact when looking at the company's overall financial health.
The Activision Blizzard earnings call is on Thursday.
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Shacknews
replyJohn Keefer posted a new article, Analyst: StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm likely delayed to 2013.
In preparation for Activision Blizzard's Q1 earnings report on Thursday, Cowan & Company analyst Doug Creutz expects Blizzard may delay StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm to 2013.-
How hard is it to add a few fucking units?
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Doesn't it add an entire single player campaign?
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Yeah, but don't bother telling the rabid masses that. All that matters is which race will be OP in multiplayer.
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I'm betting balancing the MP is taking more of the time
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Definitely not
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episodic LOL
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No shit Sherlock (not you John, just a general statement). This IS Blizzard we're talking about.
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These guys are a joke. I don't write any game off out of hand. Or a company for a few bad games, either.
Diablo 3 was disappointing most of all because there is no way that it should have taken that long to develope that game. If it had been a few years, that would be one thing, but...
This is the same, I don't care that they're making a new campaign. Whatever, I guess. They popped that inflated expectation bubble a while ago that excused this kind of garbage. -
SC2 Heart of the Swarm!
Anyone else worried this is going to be no better than Wings of Liberty? (Which I would say is a competent and enjoyable RTS but really nothing special :/ )
I refer specifically to the single player, because any of us shacknews fans of SC2 will no doubt pick up HoTS for a couple of months online, re-sub to the GSL and get all into balance talk and stuff but few will stick with it. The single player is my concern for this thread.
After the ending of SC2 (which TOTALLY seemed like it should be the series ender) I'm definitely concerned. From the trailers it looks like Kerrigan is back leading the zerg and no longer with Raynor who rescued her the problem is from a game development perspective, how do they tell the story of her coming to terms with her mostly de-zergification, yet write the story that she's already said 'fuck this' bailed on Raynors ship and then re-massed an army so quickly.
I liked SC2, the graphics and gameplay was good but the storytelling felt weak. I still feel the key difference was the quantity of in-engine cutscenes and in-engine,-in-gameplay discussions / conversations. The best mission by far was the nydus worm attack at the second last mission (4 heroes, all controllable underground) it felt like War 3 in that they spoke / bantered and just talked.
I don't need more War 3, I need more storytelling style like War 3. SC2 lacked a lot of storytelling.
From my other thread on this, I distinctly recall disliking silly plot points like:
Replacing Kerrigan as the Antagonist to the universe with a stupid Xel-Naga bad guy - it's not that he isn't strong - it's that he's not charismatic - he isn't a powerful and fearful bad guy - he's just kind of cheesy and boring.....
"Building up characters" or pretending to then killing them off and thinking we cared about them - there was little to no bonding with the characters because they seemed to predictable, cookie cutter or just plain old not fleshed out - due to not enough dialogue Cinema quality cutscenes, in engine might look good but when the entirety of conversations with a character is about ... 9 minutes total in cutcenes and NO in game (in-engine) stuff due to the lack of hero / SP focus in the SP missions themselves... well.. yeah not happy with that.
Overall I enjoyed the graphics and cutscene quality - I like the universe but I felt as if the characters were hollow, the story weak and the sweet charming ending really belonged in the final game of the series - it's pretty much an OBVIOUS conclusion now that it's going to end badly - no doubt either Jim will die or Sarah will die - and she's so, so likely to be re-zerged before the end of the series Meh
Mods: Sorry to re-post an only just expired thread but this is now a front page article, so I thought it might be interesting to see some general public opinion
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