There’s a lot going on in virtual reality (VR), the consumer head-mounted displays are due to be launched in the coming months, events across the globe feature VR tech in some fashion and investments in the industry keep growing. But it can be easy to get caught up in the hype and some companies are being more cautious than others. One of those is Blizzard Entertainment which last week celebrated its 25th anniversary.
In an interview with VentureBeat president and co-founder Michael Morhaime, senior vice president and co-founder Frank Pearce, and senior vice president Chris Metzen, discussed future Blizzard developments, with VR being one of them.
“Everybody’s talking about VR and wearing funny helmets,” Metzen said. “Culturally, we’re interested, and we’re watching. How rad would it be to run around in World of Warcraft and see it 1-to-1? That does appear to be the next horizon. But we’re kind of watching. It’s possible that other companies will take more tentative steps and plant their flags. I don’t think we’re quite ready to conquer all that yet.”
Blizzard Entertainment has some of the most well known franchises in the videogame industry, massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft is one of the leading subscription based titles, while Diablo III sold 30 million copies. Card battler Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is also growing in popularity on the esports scene. Unfortunately it seems the company won’t be releasing any of these in the VR format just yet.
It is still early days for VR, once the major headsets are on the market and the expected sales forecasts get some concrete figures larger studios like Blizzard may decide its time to invest.
If Blizzard Entertainment does reveal any VR plans VRFocus will be there to report back.
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