Back when Blizzard's former CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime departed the company he helped build, he was in his 28th year at the helm. Morhaime recently discussed his tenure in great detail, including the projects that were cancelled.
When it comes to cancelled games, Morhaime echoed the statements by Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan, who said his company cancelled more games , and the former CEO counted as many as 14 games that went into the trash bin.
The reasons ranged from insufficient market demand to projects becoming too ambitious for their own good, and the ratio of success is somewhere around 50/50.
Speaking at Gamelab conference in Barcelona as reported by Eurogamer, Morhaime said, "There's a saying that 'perfect is the enemy of great', because if you strive for perfection you'll never ship."
This is exactly what happened to Project Titan, Blizzard's ambitious MMO that was meant to redefine the genre, but it turns out Blizzard's ambition got the best them.
"It was a brand new universe, and it was going to be the next generation MMO that did all sorts of different things, it had different modes. We were sort of building two games in parallel, and it really struggled to come together", he said.
Project Titan eventually made it possible for Overwatch to happen, with Blizzard ensuring that the scope of the project was kept in check at all times.
"I think it was probably one of the best decisions that we made. We took something that wasn't going to ship for a very long time, might never have shipped, and turned it into an awesome game", he said.
Morhaime reminded that Diablo's development and launch taught the company that hitting dates is secondary - it's all about the quality of a game.
Blizzard
Ironically, Blizzard's experience has done little to affect the industry it seems, because the number of games that launch in a barely playable state, only to be fixed with subsequent updates, has reached alarming levels and made pre-orders a CDPR-only thing.
You can find Eurogamer's report .
Diablo Immortal, a mobile game by NetEase and Blizzard
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