Blizzards strange Blizzcon reveal

PhanttoM

PhanttoM
sleutelbos said:
And before that, games were released on boards for millenia - only to suddenly go to PC! Boo! Boooooo!
<snip>
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What others have done for millenia is irrelevant. We are talking about a specific game company. A company that has primarily made PC games for over 20 years.
Furthermore, Diablo has been a PC franchise with a large fanbase. And from what I've read, that fanbase has been itching for a new Diablo game.

*EDIT* Forgot to mention what's probably the most important part. The guy at the start Jim Sterling's video (https://youtu.be/HoS3KdCnbZg) was basically just asking if any of the improvements they saw in the mobile version, was coming to PC...and blizzard basically said no.


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Interestingly, some of the latest Diablo videos (only rumors) are talking about a leaked Diablo 4. The ones I noticed were;

• Diablo 4 Leaked By Blizzard After Stocks Fall: https://youtu.be/LzXGe8ApgpI
• New Leak Reveals Blizzard Was Going To Announce Diablo 4 at Blizzcon: https://youtu.be/YkAOXqLls4k
• Was Diablo 4 Really Intended To Be Announced At Blizzcon 2018? Blizzard Have Now Responded!: https://youtu.be/Ouxwi-6Kvu4​

If any of this is even remotely true, they could have avoided a lot of drama.
 
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Bunkerkind Anni

Bunkerkind Anni
after watching the Warcraft3 remastered trailer... i wonder if they target the mobile target with that one too - because we hardly ever see a big company release a trailer with such early-stage footage
 

Backer42

B
PhanttoM said:
What others have done for millenia is irrelevant. We are talking about a specific game company. A company that has primarily made PC games for over 20 years.
Furthermore, Diablo has been a PC franchise with a large fanbase. And from what I've read, that fanbase has been itching for a new Diablo game.
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From a technical PoV mobile platforms are the logical conclusion of PC gaming. A smart phone or tablet is the personal computer (PC) of the modern era.

The whole misunderstanding results from people treating the IBM PC as its own game console platform, like something from Nintendo, which has its own exclusive franchises assigned with it.

But the PC never was that. It was the platform, which sold well in offices first for its brand value (IBM), then had many cheap clones, which ended up in private households, because they provided easy access to the Internet, word processing, photo editing etc. From there game developers picked the PC up for its low barrier of entry, before "making it" and moving to consoles. PC gaming was about convincing people, who already owned a PC for something else to spend money on video games. People dedicated to video games already owned their PlayStations back then.

The reason why Blizzard launched Diablo on PC in 1996 was the exact same reason why they launch today's Diablo reskin on phones: It was THE low barrier mainstream computing platform to go for. The PC lost that role and that's why companies drop support for it.
 

bitstorm

bitstorm
Backer42 said:
From a technical PoV mobile platforms are the logical conclusion of PC gaming. A smart phone or tablet is the personal computer (PC) of the modern era.
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Sorry?

From a technical point of view a PC has a big monitor, a mouse and a keyboard, mouse and keyboard being the most flexible and precise control mechanism out there. This enabled a whole raft of complex gaming mechanics, it's why the RTS (real time strategy) genre came to be, a genre which removed previous turn based limitations.

While a mobile phone is a fiddly little device with a gimped and vague control interface which severely limits gameplay possiblities. We can thank mobile gaming for the "clicker game" genre.
 
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amigacooke

amigacooke
Bunkerkind Anni said:
and then reveal to them that the next expansion will be the Smartphone version of Elite Dangerous
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The mobile device area is very competitive, with companies still moving into the market. The latest iPad, as well as being very expensive, is also very powerful, they have to be to keep up with the competition.

It may be that those who class themselves as 'real' gamers are those who have lost touch. Elite Dangerous on iOS? Bring it on!
 

Backer42

B
bitstorm said:
From a technical point of view a PC has a big monitor, a mouse and a keyboard, mouse and keyboard being the most flexible and precise control mechanism out there.
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None of those points were the reason why Blizzard released Diablo and later their most successful MMO on PC. In fact for the longest time "big monitor" or "precise control mechanisms" weren't a thing on PC either. Didn't matter, IBM PC was the mainstream personal computer of the 90s/00s. Smartphone is the mainstream personal computer of the 10s.

Blizzard goes, where the mainstream money is. Where they can get millions of sales.

We saw similar discussions, when gamedevs left Amiga fans in the cold. People were poking on the fact, how much superior the dedicated custom hardware of the Amiga was for (2D) video games. They didn't realize that the only reason why gamedevs were on Amiga in first place, was that it was at some point a very well selling home computer platform and provided a low barrier of entry into game development. Companies don't build emotional attachment to hardware platforms, they move on, once bigger money waits somewhere else.
 

amigacooke

amigacooke
bitstorm said:
Sorry?

From a technical point of view a PC has a big monitor, a mouse and a keyboard, mouse and keyboard being the most flexible and precise control mechanism out there. This enabled a whole raft of complex gaming mechanics, it's why the RTS (real time strategy) genre came to be, a genre which removed previous turn based limitations.

While a mobile phone is a fiddly little device with a gimped and vague control interface which severely limits gameplay possiblities. We can thank mobile gaming for the "clicker game" genre.
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Mobile device does include tablets which are not necessarily small fiddly devices. I see thousands of Windows PC that don't have a monitor, laptops for example.
 

amigacooke

amigacooke
Backer42 said:
We saw similar discussions, when gamedevs left Amiga fans in the cold. People were poking on the fact, how much superior the dedicated custom hardware of the Amiga was for (2D) video games. They didn't realize that the only reason why gamedevs were on Amiga in first place, was that it was at some point a very well selling home computer platform and provided a low barrier of entry into game development. Companies don't build emotional attachment to hardware platforms, they move on, once bigger money waits somewhere else.
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I concur. Companies released the same games on the, at the time, markedly inferior DOS/Windows PC because it would sell.
 

metatheurgist

metatheurgist
Yep. This is business. It has no loyalty or morality beyond the pursuit of the dollar. Remember this is what the world runs on. It's what we agreed to implicitly by supporting it by being part of it and never questioning it. :)
 

PigKiller

PigKiller
Diablo Immoral.
"Because the One Undefeatable Demon is Greed."

And some people think chapter 4 is a disappointment.
 

Caramel Clown

Caramel Clown
So, it looks like it already bites Activision/Blizzard in the backside. Their stock is in steady decline. Looks like neither gamers or investors are happy. All I have to say - they deserve every single bit of this, and even worse.
 

Jacques d'Orleans

Banned
Jacques d'Orleans
Robin of Spiritwood said:
A cheap reskinned clone with the Blizzard brand stamped on it, squashed into a 5 inch screen on a phone is their idea of the future of their game? To get a revenue stream?

Imagine that this is what they chose to do when handed the legacy of Diablo?

They deserve to perish from the Earth. It's no longer a game company.
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Welcome to the corporate world, you must be new here.
The asian market is all what counts in mobile gaming, it's the gaming industries version of the California gold rush, there are literally billions to be made.
Just a few numbers:
Chinas mobile gaming revenue was $12.13 billion in 2017, up 47.3 percent from a year earlier. China’s domestic mobile games revenue in 2022 is projected to reach $24.67 billion $ and PC online games revenue in 2017 was $15.53 billion, up 1.2 percent from a year earlier. Total PC online games revenue in 2022 is projected to reach $17.44 billion and that's only China, we haven't even talked about Korea and Japan tho.

The Chinese Mobile Gaming Market is to be reckoned with, and every game dev who doesn't see that deserves to perish from earth, simple as that. Nobody cares about BlizzCon, and the hurt feelies of some PC gamers, it will be forgotten in a few weeks when the next big fuss is made by them youtubers.

Sauce:https://venturebeat.com/2018/05/07/...amers-and-42-billion-in-game-revenue-by-2022/
 

jasonbarron

jasonbarron
PigKiller said:
Diablo Immoral.
"Because the One Undefeatable Demon is Greed."

And some people think chapter 4 is a disappointment.
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Do you like to be paid for your efforts, are do you just work for charity and the good of mankind? Personally, I don't know anybody who doesn't like to make money.
 

bitstorm

bitstorm
amigacooke said:
Mobile device does include tablets which are not necessarily small fiddly devices. I see thousands of Windows PC that don't have a monitor, laptops for example.
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Laptop monitors are big enough, phone screens aren't.

You won't be playing any complex RTS games on that laptop unless you plug a mouse in.

And you'll struggle to play any 1st person shooter without a mouse too, unless auto-aim or similar has been added to work around the less precise control interface.

I honesty don't really see anyone being able to argue that mobile games aren't generally much simpler than PC games.

amigacooke said:
Elite Dangerous on iOS? Bring it on!
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ED on an IOS tablet? Not without seriously rethinking how it fits together and throwing a whole bunch of stuff out. And you'd get utterly trounced in any PvP confrontation if it were cross platform.
 
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