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UPDATE
This seems to have been confirmed by Blizzard themselves as well.
Activision are currently having the time of their lives, with Blizzard and themselves joining hands in one of the now biggest gaming companies around. Activision Blizzard are currently holding the Activate Asia Pacific conference in Auckland New Zealand to show their sales prowess from the Christmas line-up to regional representatives of retailers. In the fray, Managing Director Philip Earl made quite bold predictions about market shares for the upcoming Christmas, including sales of Wrath of the Lich King.
The interesting fact with this presentation is that while we recently got confirmation that StarCraft II won't be joining us for the Christmas of 2008, we WILL be seeing StarCraft II sometime during 2009.
Next year's offerings from Activision Blizzard should include highly anticipated PC strategy title StarCraft II, the sequel to one of the world's most enduringly popular games.
While this isn't a bold statement by any measure, it's nice to hear that communication inside the massive company talks in the terms of "2009" rather than "sometime in the distant future". Most predictions of StarCraft II's release date range around 2009, so fans will not get overly surprised by this announcement. Seeing how the release schedule for Diablo III is at least slightly linked to that of StarCraft II there are probably plenty of Diablo fans out there that are happy to know this.
A word of caution though! Even though Activision Blizzard owns Blizzard, they have always been a very independent company, regardless of owners, and could very well hold StarCraft back to 2010 just to prove us wrong...
More info in the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty Beta Center! Here are a few highlights:
- Blizzard Updates Beta Signups Page
- Cavez: We’re in the final stretch
- Win Starcraft II BETA keys!!!
- StarCraft II Beta Release Date
- Activision Confirms StarCraft II for 2009
I’m glad for the additional note I hate it when big companies force little ones into an early release.