It will bear watching whether Irvine-based Blizzard Entertainment Inc. has shifted its long-held strategy of releasing games in China several months after domestic launches.
The company launched its fourth World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, in China just a week after the game hit shelves in the U.S. and other select markets on Sept. 25.
That marked “the first time any game has officially released in China as part of a global launch,” Blizzard Chief Executive Mike Morhaime recently told analysts following the company’s third-quarter earnings report.
The change in timing is dramatic. Blizzard released Cataclysm—WoW’s third title—and StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty in China more than six months after their U.S. releases. That positioned the world’s most populous country as a significant revenue driver between big game releases.
Blizzard isn’t saying how it plans to handle the upcoming release of StarCraft II’s first expansion, called Heart of the Swarm, which was pushed back from its original domestic release date in late 2012 to March 2013. Europe and other international markets are expected to get the title on that date, but Blizzard hasn’t yet disclosed when Heart of the Swarm will launch in China.
Don’t be surprised if the release in China is again much closer to other markets’. It will take a bit longer to see if a new strategic pattern is emerging or whether the recent China moves are simply exceptions driven by circumstance.
Heart of the Swarm will continue the storyline of the real-time strategy game, in which three races face off in a science-fiction world. The standard game will sell for about $40, with special editions costing about $60.
Blizzard sold more than 1.5 million copies of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty globally in the first 48 hours of its July 2010 release in most markets, setting a then-record for games of its type. The title has sold more than 6 million copies to date.
Blizzard cancelled its annual fanfest Blizz-Con at the Anaheim Convention Center this year. It was the first year without the event since it launched the event in 2005.
Instead Blizzard is holding the 2012 Battle.net World Championship, a global eSports event in Shanghai featuring tournaments for competitive gamers who play StarCraft II.
Blizzard is a unit of Santa Monica-based Activision Blizzard Inc. Blizzard had revenue of $414 million, up 39% from a year earlier.
Operating income rose 40% to $168 million.
Online subscription revenue dropped 33% to $226 million. The company didn’t release any new games in 2011. Strong sales of Diablo III and Mists of Pandaria drove the results. Blizzard customers pay about $40 for WoW and $15 a month to play it online.
Red Five Funding
A Laguna Hills video-game maker founded by former Blizzard engineers has raised at least $11 million from an unnamed investor, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
A spokesperson for Red Five Studios Inc. declined comment on the investment.
He did say the company is nearing the end of beta testing on Fireball, a war game that is free to play online and offers players options to buy items with real cash to help them advance.
Fireball is considered a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, or MMORPG, in which gamers around the world play in real-time and interact with each other and their characters.
Irvine-based Blizzard is credited with establishing the genre with its World of Warcraft franchise. The investment round came on the heels of a $15 million debt offering Red Five secured late last month from an unknown investor.
Red 5 was established in 2005 by Mark Kern, team leader for WoW, art director William Petras, and Taewon Yun, who launched WoW in South Korea.
The company in 2006 raised $18.5 million in its first fundraising round from Benchmark Capital and Sierra Ventures.
Sandy Services
Anaheim Hills-based Saca Technologies is providing free IT and cloud-based services for companies affected by last month’s Hurricane Sandy.
The company is offering potential customers the ability to migrate their IT network and virtual desktops to SACA’s servers at no charge.
The services are free for 30 days and can be discontinued afterward, Chief Executive Andrew Saca said.
The company has contacted government agencies in New York, New Jersey and other heavily flooded areas.
“We’re just trying to get the word out to improve visibility,” Saca said.
The company employs 53 people, with other offices in Los Angeles, Portland and Mexico.
Clients include Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and University of California, Los Angeles.
SACA Technologies has between $5 million and $10 million in annual revenue.
It recently bought its 23,000-square-foot headquarters for $2.75 million to accommodate growth and lab expansion.
