One of the oldest and most profitable video game franchises of all time, Warcraft, is coming to mobile devices, Activision Blizzard announced in yesterday’s quarterly earnings report. According to a new report, Blizzard is working on a new installment of the Warcraft franchise that will be available on mobile devices. While it was previously announced that Activision Blizzard was working on a Warcraft mobile game, this is the first time they have revealed a 2022 release date. Rather than a traditional phone game, presumably due to its impending acquisition by Microsoft and many other things that could happen), here’s the news that Blizzard is working on a new Warcraft mobile game scheduled for 2022.
Although Schreier joked that the idea is a combination of Warcraft and the popular augmented reality game Pokemon GO, the true nature of the upcoming mobile game remains unknown. The only thing Schreier knows is that this is a “new” experience, so it’s unlikely to be as simple as a mobile port of a game like Warcraft III. The upcoming Warcraft project won’t be Blizzard’s first to bring one of its biggest franchises to mobile devices. According to IGN, the company is being acquired by Microsoft for a whopping $67 billion and promises to be “in the hands of a brand new WoW mobile content player for the first time.”
Blizzard previously confirmed that it was working on other Warcraft mobile games that were in “advanced development” last August. At least one of its games will be released this year, the company said in its quarterly earnings report on Thursday. In its most recent quarterly financial report, Activision confirmed that Blizzard Entertainment will launch new Warcraft content this year (according to recent Blizzard reviews), which will also include Warcraft mobile games. According to its February 2022 earnings report, Activision Blizzard plans to release new Call of Duty games and Warcraft mobile games in 2022.
A few years ago, Blizzard found itself in a fan fix after BlizzCon ran out of time to announce Diablo Immortal, a mobile-only spin-off game that has yet to be released. The developer has had success with Hearthstone on mobile and is expected to release the controversial Diablo Immortal later this year (after a delay). So far, Hearthstone has been the only Warcraft game available on mobile devices.
Activision Blizzard didn’t reveal anything other than the release on mobile devices, such as the genre of the game and possible components of World of Warcraft. Blizzard’s announcement gives the impression that the new mobile game has nothing to do with other games in the franchise like World of Warcraft and Warcraft 3. The release of the “Diablo” mobile phone is specifically scheduled for the same year that Blizzard says it will also release “Warcraft” for smartphones. In 2018, there were reports that Blizzard was working on a mobile version of the franchise that would be similar to Pokemon Go, which presumably means it’s an augmented reality game. In 2018, Kotaku reported that one of the company’s mobile games could be an augmented reality game similar to Pokemon Go. Since the last show in 2019, there have been many rumors about the development of various Blizzard games.
While acquisitions are still in the works, developers are working to join the group and delay Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV, but this earnings report confirms we can still expect new games from Activision Blizzard in 2022. The Blizzard division said Blizzard is planning new “must-have” content for the 2022 Warcraft series. In addition to the new project, Blizzard also revealed that World of Warcraft has reported active participation throughout 2021, and confirmed that its developers are working on delivering “new experiences” in World of Warcraft and Hearthstone.
That said, this is good news for Warcraft fans and mobile alike, as they’ll hopefully have a similar experience on the go if Blizzard decides to make a full-fledged MMORPG or real-time strategy game. If it offers the full game, just at lower graphics levels but with everything else intact, it will certainly be an extremely popular way to enter the game world and may be more attractive to new players, which is all to inform Activision Blizzard’s thought. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has previously said that free mobile games will enable both existing and new fans to experience the Warcraft universe in a whole new way.