"It wasn’t a deciding or driving factor for us. We don’t know what the auction house is going to do for us monetarily. We have a lot of projections and they wildly vary. We are pretty sure we are not going to lose money. That was the most important thing. If we are going to do this, it’s a lot of server infrastructure, it’s a lot of hardware. We have to make sure we can at least cover this cost. The thing that drove our decision to do this was the same that drives us how we doing everything at Blizzard. We felt it was a really good service for players. It was something that we could do for players that we thought they would appreciate; that we felt would make the game experience better. As a company, that is kind of where we always start.
I had someone earlier ask me if we are going to make mobile games. Well, we are going to make games and if a mobile platform is a good platform for the game we make, then we will make a mobile game. Most of the companies I worked for didn’t think that way. They figured out what platform do we want, what is our financial model, what IP would the community like. Ok, make a game out of that. WE go completely the other way. We say “ ahh, that would be cool to make this game”. So we make the game and then decided how we can make sure not to lose our shirt on this. That is kind of the start with the hopes it will make a lot of money. But we have never been too worried about that because if you making something good, the money will always follow. That is always the better way to approach it. What cool things can we do for the players, what cool games can we make?"
There is no real reason for an announcement of beta at a conference call. It's not really the venue for huge announcements.
Umm, mate, Starcraft 2 beta was announced through a conference call with something along the lines of "Beta starting in 1 week", there is a scheduled conference call for start of August, call me crazy but it seems to all be falling perfectly in line for a August 10th-15th Beta release
I'm 95% positive that D3 Beta will be announced at said Early August conference call with a similar "1 week then beta"
1
I had someone earlier ask me if we are going to make mobile games. Well, we are going to make games and if a mobile platform is a good platform for the game we make, then we will make a mobile game. Most of the companies I worked for didn’t think that way. They figured out what platform do we want, what is our financial model, what IP would the community like. Ok, make a game out of that. WE go completely the other way. We say “ ahh, that would be cool to make this game”. So we make the game and then decided how we can make sure not to lose our shirt on this. That is kind of the start with the hopes it will make a lot of money. But we have never been too worried about that because if you making something good, the money will always follow. That is always the better way to approach it. What cool things can we do for the players, what cool games can we make?"
1
Umm, mate, Starcraft 2 beta was announced through a conference call with something along the lines of "Beta starting in 1 week", there is a scheduled conference call for start of August, call me crazy but it seems to all be falling perfectly in line for a August 10th-15th Beta release
I'm 95% positive that D3 Beta will be announced at said Early August conference call with a similar "1 week then beta"