And then they announced it, it’s called Immortal
It hasn’t been revealed yet and they are still hiring for it:
Diablo Immortal has its own section:
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If you follow the Diablo gaming news, you’d know D4 is coming. They’ll announce it soon enough, all these “well these are all Immortal stuff” is just basic ignorance. Not that this is the right place to discuss Diablo content 
ahem
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You’re not the hero we need but the one we deserve.
No problems there. Currently, they seem to be encouraged to not make any new maps. Ever.
If a gamer is getting squeamish about paying an extra $5 for a Mission, then we’re already in a gaming world of hurt. No wonder why many companies ended up shifting to mobile, while freemium continues to dominate the markets.
I’ve heard from one Reddit user how he’s a child living in a 3rd world country. Yeah, I can see $5 as being a huge barrier to him. As someone who had to get money from my parents, but grew up in a much better situation than this user apparently did… I get it. However, for the rest of us, 5, freaking, USD, should not cause us to start getting panicky and consulting our accountants. It would be a Coop Mission. Not some consumable like “Blizzard Bucks” or “StarCraft Gems/Pearls”.
You talk about value? The amount of value I’d get out of a solid, Coop Mission would far exceed $5.
You mentioned upthread that Blizz’ Coop model is they can really on Warchests, skins, announcers, and COs to make a lot of their money. Where’s the motivation for the player you’re describing to do that? Why would they buy cosmetic stuff if it offered no gamplay content? If they were motivated enough to get skins, announcers, sprays, decals, etc., then surely they wouldn’t mind paying $5 for a map?
You don’t think Blizzard figuring out ways to take more money from players is a bad thing?
The dollar amount isn’t necessarily the point. The notion they would even go there is, the idea that they would think about monetizing different aspects of the game likely because they have profits front and center.
Game companies are getting burned for their overt greediness. Blizzard themselves have copped plenty of flak; do they want to risk more of that?
Maybe for you but what about other players? How many would see it the same way and how many would not?
You would have to ask those players why they would be willing to cough up money to buy these cosmetics. I don’t bother with that stuff so I wouldn’t know.
Everyone has different reasons to spend the way they do. A few might buy up tons of stuff, some may only buy commanders, others spend nothing at all.
But that’s the business model they chose. Whether it’s working out for Blizzard is another thing.
For these people $5 would be perceived as small change.
But what percentage of the whole player base do these people make up? It’s probably small.
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To reiterate… “no problems there”. The most likely scenario is we won’t get ANY new missions. Blizzard may want to charge, but people aren’t buying. They don’t prioritize Coop like they used to, so they’re better off NOT putting any more time into making new coop maps.
We’re pretty much in a “agree to disagree” situation.
No, it’s absolutely a good thing. That means they have a way to earn more money to keep this game alive. At the moment, we don’t have any option to give Blizzard more money even if we want to. All 3 campaigns, commanders, Nova’s missions, even War chest are one-time items.
Remind me, how much money does Blizzard expect from the sale of War Chests every year? Like $500k to $750k each year or something? Come on, even the bottom-list mobile game can make 80 times of that. Yes, a trash game can make 80 times more money than SC2.
If you don’t give the company money, how do you expect any new stuff from their game?
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Blizzard is a subsidiary that’s part of a company worth $42 billion. I’m sure they (as in the executives and shareholders) will appreciate your generosity if you are willing to cough up.
That partly depends on the game’s financial situation. How much would they stand to make if they start selling maps? What would be its proportion of total revenue? How much does it cost to make a map?
There’s also player population to consider. How many would buy in? If there is not enough players to at least recoup the costs of making a map or anything for that matter, what’s the point? Co-op is nearly 4 years old now - how much longer can they keep it going?
For this to even be a viable revenue stream, all the numbers first have to add up.
Do they even release that kind of information?
The only thing I can find is something about a $500,000 prize pool from 2 years ago.
Bit of an apples and oranges here. There are fundamental differences between a mobile game and SC2 to consider that makes it an unfair fight. For one, mobile games are typically designed with pay-to-win purchases in mind.
The problem isn’t a company making money. I have no problems with anyone making a profit.
The problem is that certain companies want ALL of the profits they can get their hands on plus they want more of top of that. To achieve this, they use shady tactics and design their games in ways that tries to squeeze as much money out of gamers as possible. Their priority is the shareholder, not the gamer.
Giving companies money doesn’t necessarily mean the consumer will get what they want either. Just have a look at how Anthem and Fallout 76 is going.
While adding a price to co-op maps is on the low end of the same spectrum, it will still be lumped in with the same greedy BS that game companies have been trying to get away with, especially in the last few years. They will have to contend with the accusation of being greedy if selling co-op maps becomes a thing.
It is possible for a game company to make a game and sell for a profit without having to resort to monetization as an excuse to justify the expense of development.
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Yeah, does that make Blizzard feel better? One is required much more effort and money to make but sale is low. The other requires lower investment but their sale is sky high. “But our game quality is better”, do the beautiful words can fill an empty stomach?
In the game, it doesn’t matter what kind of game you make, doesn’t matter if your game is trash, as long as it sells, you win. Orange, apple, or even a freaking pineapple, doesn’t matter. Annual revenue is the end result, whether do you have the money to keep the company alive or not, that matters.
Then, show your ideas how to help SC2 earn more money. We are not even talking about $700 millions a year like the top mobile game. Hell, even $10 million may be plenty enough. How to earn that amount? It takes about 1 millions players buying 2 commanders every year.
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Hence why they decided to make Diablo Immortal. I wonder how that’s working out for them…
This is the mindset that the executives of game companies follow nowadays - fat profits by any means necessary. Product quality and ethics of monetization are lucky to be even considered secondary.
The end result may be big profits but it’s at expense of the gamers.
Being possible doesn’t mean it will work. You have to consider that the game is over 9 years old, past its prime and likely to be slowly bleeding away player numbers. These would have been major factors in deciding to make the game (semi) free to play as way to help keep it afloat.
Since they already used that card, there may well be nothing else along those lines.
I’d be surprised if SC2 is still able to pull in even $2 million a year and still have even just 100,000 monthly active players.
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Unless a company is trying to flex, generally no. A few Youtubers I watch tend to use this though:
www.superdataresearch . com/worldwide-digital-games-market/
(remove the spaces)
Uh… no. Trash tier mobile games are a dime a dozen, and tend to look like other (popular) ones already on the market. Given that the development costs are likely to be insanely low, even if they only make, arbitrarily saying, $100k over its lifetime, and then shut it down in 6 months, they still make a pretty healthy return.
I’m not sure which games you are talking about. But, as I mentioned earlier, the top 10 in 2018 made from $66m to $742m. The game at the bottom of that list still made $66m, and it was released since 2017, and still pretty popular until now. The game at the top of the list may even make more money than Overwatch. The only thing I can guarantee that none of them have the same high quality as Blizzard’s games.
Looking at the Blizzcon map, there will be an SC2 demo in Hall E, so hopefully that means something new.
The schedule also has at least 5 “coming soon” on calendar. Maybe one is for SC2 stuff.
Blizzcon is just a week away!
Don’t count on it. These are very likely to be reserved for whatever major announcements they are planning to do.
Even if one is for SC2, what exactly would they be doing to fill in the allotted 45 minutes?
If there were a new commander, they would probably tack on the balance changes for ladder and a Q&A. I agree that they would have to stretch the time, if one of them is for SC2, that is.
They have an allocated slot to discuss SC2 which is the Pylon Show Live. Being the only SC2 panel, all of it would be there.
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They’ll probably announce the SC2 auto-battler game for mobile…done by an external developer using the current in game models…hehe
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Sounds fun, lucky for me, I have a phone.
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I would prefer if they did changes to ascension levels over new commanders, and also 2-5 new co op maps. They did literally nothing for co op. I regret spending money, i thought if i spend money, that we will get more co op content…