Q&A with Blizzard's CEO

[img width=630 height=137]http://www.starcraft2forums.org/img/qa3.jpg[/img]
Q&A with Blizzard's CEO​

Here's a quick Q&A session that doesn't deal totally with Starcraft, but at least gives us a slight update on its overall progress.

I'll be placing in only questions that deal with (directly or indirectly) Starcraft 2.

Source: A+E Interactive

Q: Maybe the 11 years in between Starcraft and Starcraft 2. I would guess most companies aren’t willing to go that long before coming up with a quality sequel.
A: We weren’t working on Starcraft 2 the whole time. What you point out is important. We were working on other things. We try to focus on other things. We try not to do every possible opportunity at once. We try to pick opportunities and try to execute on them well.

Q: Asia is very interesting. What do you see as the future for you guys?
A: I think that the China market is very exciting. You have so many people in China moving from the farms into the cities. Their economy is on an accelerated path with more and more people having the disposable income to consume interactive entertainment. It’s a very exciting place to be for us. Gaming is very popular. There are 150,000 to 200,000 game rooms in China. There are only 30,000 McDonald’s in the whole world.

Q: Do you want to go on to more platforms and do that more easily? You’ve had a lot of PC focus.
A: Our focus continues to be on the PC. We love playing console games. There are a lot of Guitar Hero fans and Call of Duty fans at Blizzard. We’re always looking at what are the most appropriate platforms for the games we are developing. I wouldn’t rule anything out in the future but right now our focus is on the PC.

Q: What are your goals now that you have the most successful online game of all time?
A: There are still a lot of untapped markets around the world. A lot haven’t come online yet like India, some markets in Eastern Europe. We’re very excited about the Warcraft movie with Legendary Pictures. The goal there is to prove that movies based on video games don’t have to be bad. We have a pipeline of additional games that we are working on. The first of them is Starcraft 2 and an upgraded version of our Battle.net gaming service.

[img width=550 height=412]http://www.mercextra.com/blogs/aei/wp-content/photos/ss38_hires.jpg[/img]​

Q: How is Starcraft 2 progressing? What stage is it in?
A: Starcraft 2 is coming along great. It’s still pre-alpha. We don’t have anybody outside the company playing it yet. We’ll open it up with the alpha to the whole company. Then we will have the beta open up to outside players. We’ll take their feedback.

Q: You must be happy with the Activision Blizzard name?
A: One common question I get here is how come it isn’t Blizzard Activision. But we are happy with it.

 

Is this a translated version of it?

 

No.

 

Nice picture, where can I get the whole size of it?

 

Right click it and hit "view image"


But it's full size right now. You might want to scan the images on the Blizzard screen shots.

 

What is that orange stuff under the colossi? It almost looks like some kind of explosion, but I don't see any terran tanks that could be fireing at them.

 

It looks to be emanating from stalker.

EDIT: I think it's Yamato Cannon from the BCs, as you can see, there's two other smoldering explosions under the Colossi.

 

The stalkers are all on the left, and the colossi are on the right. How could the explosions under the colossi be from the stalkers?

 

No. The BCs have fired Yamatos at the two Colossi and at the Stalker in the middle. The Stalker's explosion is still...going lol. The other two are smoldering.

The explosions are from the Yamato from the BCs.

 

wait wut? warcraft movie??? wut does he mean? never heard of this before. Hopefully it will be really good, and not bad like most game movies are, because they ussualy do not do so well...

 

oaff..warcraft movie!!!

nice find btw =D

 

Nice find! It's nice to see some company-related news that doesn't totally involve SC2 =)

Warcraft movie will be interesting...I hope its a retelling of WC3...and not some WOW-spin off...the storyline in wc3 is amazing...very dark, but awesome!

I wonder how much longer this pre-alpha then alpha phase will last...especially since we haven't even seen the Zerg yet...I'm starting to think we may not see this released til '09 for sure now =/

 

BURN HAPPYPILLS!!! why did u call urself happypils? ur not happy!!! ahhh! sc will come out next year ok? haha jk, but ya aobut the movei, hopefully it wont be like world of warcraft based. The cinematics from warcraf were so great, imagine a full 2 hours of blizzard cinematics! lol that would be great!

 

woot Blizzard plans to continue to be a PC gaming company!!! No sacraficing the quality of games to make up for deficiencies in consoles, hoorah!!!

 

I really can't see a Warcraft movie for some reason. I am assuming that it would be CGI, and this makes feel like it would be just one really long cut scene from the games. I feel like the plot for the movie might be the conclusion of the Frozen Throne. I know that WoW is suppose to be the conclusion, but I think that it could be done in a movie and leave a better sense of being final. I still can't picture the likes Furion on the bigscreen though, just seems weird.

 

I think it might be like 300 with a blend of CGI and live actors. What storyline it'll be I have no idea. I doubt this is going to attract a large crowd since it'll mostly be the gamers that will be seeing this, and there really aren't all that much gamers, let alone gamers who've played WC3. But then again, there is WoW...

 

I hated the game and I'll hate the movie too.

Starcraft: The Return

Gimme some of that and I will poo in my shorts.

TRILOGY!

 

Hey Jonny where do you get this information dude it seems so rare!!! and were you asking or was it just posted and you took it from a site so we can see it...because its awesome information!

 

It was taken from a site. Check the source.

I got it off a hint from a friend. Then google searched. I've also seen it on other sites since then and decided to put it up.

 

Well It helps quite a lot for us! So how do you think people get these questions can we ask some ourselves?