The big publisher Activision Blizzard recently announced its latest quarterly results. For Blizzard, particularly WoW, Hearthstone, and Overwatch played a major role. However, no one is currently talking about StarCraft. This concerns fans who hoped for more about Starcraft 2 or even a new game.
This is the situation at Activision Blizzard: The numbers from Activision Blizzard for the second quarter of 2019 were slightly worse than for the same quarter the previous year. Nevertheless, Blizzard remained optimistic, especially.
The reason for this is the number of players. This quarter, as well as the previous one, there were 32 million users. However, they reportedly invested more time on average per day than before.
How are the individual Blizzard games doing? The report particularly praised Hearthstone, which was able to increase its player numbers due to the expansion “Rise of Shadows” with the solo adventure “The Dalaran Heist“.
New information was also provided about other Blizzard games. WoW is currently benefiting from the hype surrounding the Classic servers, and Overwatch has remained relatively stable.
Although nothing official was said about new games and brands, there are rumors surrounding Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2.
Starcraft missing from the 6 brands receiving larger teams
What is happening with StarCraft? In all the listings, some fans miss their beloved StarCraft. The franchise was not mentioned at all in the quarterly report.
Kotaku author Jason Schreier explicitly points out on Twitter that Starcraft is missing from the listing of the 6 “important brands” for which Activision is expanding teams and planning more content.
These brands include Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Warcraft, Hearthstone, Overwatch, and Diablo – but not Starcraft.
A successful brand fading into oblivion?
How is StarCraft doing currently? From the perspective of fans, the real-time strategy game StarCraft 2 is in very good shape. The balance is said to be in the best condition it has been in the last 12 years, according to Reddit user NamerNotLiteral and other commentators.
Recent tournaments have also received more attention. The IEM Katowice in February had 76 participants competing for a prize pool of 400,000 dollars. Blizzard calls it the largest StarCraft tournament of all time.
However, there are problems with player count and public interest. RTS games do not receive the attention that MOBAs and Battle Royale have gained in recent years.
StarCraft used to be a really big brand for Blizzard. Currently, it is fading a bit into obscurity.
Does StarCraft have a future? Currently, StarCraft 2 continues to be supported with tournaments, maintenance, and balance patches. However, no major expansions are planned.
A StarCraft 3 is also unlikely at the moment. If a new real-time strategy game were to be worked on, which seems quite unlikely given the general interest, it would probably turn out to be a WarCraft 4. At least a remastered version of WC3 is in the works.
A new game in the StarCraft universe? To continue the fairly successful franchise outside of the RTS genre, Blizzard seemingly worked on a first-person shooter in the style of StarCraft.
The game was codenamed “Ares.”
However, Kotaku reported in June that this very game was canceled in favor of Diablo 4 and Overwatch.
This aligns with the fact that Diablo and Overwatch are among the brands that Activision wants to expand the teams on and delight players – but not Starcraft.
This leads to the conclusion:
- Until recently, Starcraft still had a future; a new game was in development
- Now, however, it seems Blizzard has put the brand on hold at least for now
It is uncertain whether there are any plans for the StarCraft universe in the future. Fans certainly hope so.
If there has been anything said about StarCraft lately, it has mainly been in connection with AI:
