Starcraft Ghost Put On Hold

After numerous previous delays, Blizzard has made the likelihood we'll ever play Starcraft: Ghost effectively nil. They've announced they're putting game development on hold indefinitely, as they're reconsidering options for the next generation of consoles. From the Gamespy article: "Like many in the industry, we've been impressed with the potential of the new consoles, and we're looking forward to exploring that potential further ... In addition to allowing us to determine the best course for StarCraft: Ghost, this review period will help us lay the groundwork for our future console games."

Comments

next gen ad infinitum

[gEvil (beta)]

So, the game that was announced five years ago that was going to run on the then "next generation consoles" (ps2, gc, xbox) is now being put on hold to decide if it will run on the current "next generation consoles" (ps3, 360, rev)? Just turn the thing into a damn PC game and get it out the door!

Re:next gen ad infinitum

[flyingsquid]

"So, the game that was announced five years ago that was going to run on the then "next generation consoles" (ps2, gc, xbox) is now being put on hold to decide if it will run on the current "next generation consoles" (ps3, 360, rev)

Maybe their production facilities are running low on crystals and vespene gas.

Re:next gen ad infinitum

[umbrellasd]

It's called, "Oh, shit. We could make World of Starcraft on these Consoles and make bank."

Re:next gen ad infinitum

[patio11]

I think its that they have too many customers playing WoW and have reached their farm limit. Spawn more overlords!

No, seriously, that wasn't just a joke. Where is the higher return on investment for a couple million dollars and thousands of hours of programmer time -- improving WoW's sales by 5% or delivering a smash-hit console FPS? When you sell a box of FPS: The Killing for the PlayCube360, you have to split the pie with the console manufacturer (license fees) and the retail store. When you sell an auto-billed monthly subscription to MMORPG: The Farming, you send Mastercard their 50 cents and then the rest is almost pure profit directly in your pocket (we'll ignore Blizzard's China operations, where they get a very, very tiny slice of the pie relative to their Chinese partner -- its still Almost Free Money from their perspective). Add to that WoW is currently dominating its category and the FPS market is saturated by a bunch of name brands, none of which have "Blizzard" on the box...

Damn, just damn

[larry bagina]

Of course, I love starcraft. So the good news is we can imagine how awesome this game would be without the disappointment of it not living up to our expectations.

Re:Damn, just damn

[MustardMan]

Me, I actually thought it sounded kind of lame... a starcraft FPS? Come on, I don't want them wasting their time on this. I want them building STARCRAFT TWO.

I lived for starcraft over battle.net, and I'd love to see an updated version. Warcraft 3 was OK, but I liked the scifi feel of starcraft much better.

Re:Damn, just damn

[mrchaotica]

Warcraft 3 was OK, but I liked the scifi feel of starcraft much better.

I liked the "send 400 Zerglings hurtling towards the enemy base all at once" feel better, as opposed to Warcraft 3's "micromanage 2 units" feel.

Re:Damn, just damn

[Edmund Blackadder]

I agree. Starcraft was much better than WC3, and is probably the best RTS made so far. However, I also really hope Starcraft is not the end of the genre and Blizzard actually tries to make Starcraft2.

As such their refocusing on cosnoles is really worrying. It is well known that RTSs have always sucked on consoles. If Blizzard decides to go to consoles they will probably abandon the RTS genre.

Re:Damn, just damn

[drxray]

"send 400 Zerglings hurtling towards the enemy base all at once" Don't you mean: Select 12 zerglings, send to enemy Select 12 zerglings, send to enemy Select 12 zerglings, send to enemy Select 12 zerglings, send to enemy... Starcraft is great in many ways, but awful in several others. Instead of Ghost can't we just have a version with better squad handling, order queues, and not locked to 640x480*? It'd take them a month to make, and me and half a million other fans would buy it. It's like they have so much money they don't care any more. *I appreciate that a locked resolution creates a level playing ground. So force the same resolution among all players in multiplay, just let it be higher...

In other news...

[Perseid]

The sequel to Starcraft: Ghost, tentatively named Starcraft: Ghost Forever, is tentatively slated for early 2007...

Release schedule

[DiamondLOD]

I believe that makes the release schedule as follows:
1) Nintendo Revolution/Go
2) Playstation 3
3) Duke Nukem Forever
4) Phantom Console
5) Starcraft Ghost

Best ... Advertising ... Ever

[MagicDude]

This is a brilliant move to promote the stealthyness of SCG. What kind of stealth based game would it be if you could see it coming from 6 months ahead of time? Come christmas time, you'll walk into your local Best Buy, and there will be a huge display which just appeared overnight. Even the register biscuits won't know how it got there. It'll be beautiful.

This is news?

[Rendo]

Much like the delay with Diablo 2, this doesn't surprise me coming from Blizzard. Their lack of dedication and work ethic makes me want to boycott all Blizzard games now. It's disgusting how they only focus on ONE game, and we all know what game that is, because it generates the most income for them. Maybe one day Blizzard will regain a reputation again that will make me want to buy their games. DIGUSTING.

Re:This is news?

[MBraynard]

Looking at the same events with a different perspective, they are looking to generate money by making people the most happy. (Very different from how government's generate money).

So to maximize profits/happiness, they have decided to scrap a game that seemed a little unoriginal. It read like a combo between Halo and splinter Cell. It might have come out a little like Brute Force - a great game, but not Blizzard Worthy.

These guys have never failed to hit it out of the park and they are the only company I would buy a game from without testing the demo. And I don't even play WoW.

Blizzard only DOES make games that people want to play. They could have probably cheezed out some cash on this one - ala SWG - with a subpar (for them, non-spectacular title) but opted not to.

This only raises my esteem for the company and it's products.

Re:This is news?

[code-e255]

Blizzard has several different studios. The main one's working on World of Warcraft (they're working on the expansion, The Burning Crusade atm); Blizzard North, which made the Diablo games, is working on some new unannounced project, and Swinging Ape Studios are working on SC: Ghost. So no, the company isn't really focusing on only one game. Lack of dedication and work ethic? Get a clue, mate. Blizzard is arguably the best game developer in the world. The reason why they're indefinitely delaying Starcraft: Ghost is probably because it's not amazingly great, not because they just can't be bothered working on it anymore. Blizzard, unlike Electronic Arts, don't make games for the same of making money per se; they make games because they love games. Because their games have all been extremely successful, and because they've got millions of die-hard fans, releasing something that's below their quality standard would only tarnish their name. They've got enough money, so they can afford to indefinitely delay a project. Ever heard of Warcraft Adventures? They completely cancelled that game after years of development because it didn't live up to their standards.

Re:This is news?

[shumway]

Err. Wouldn't a lazy and undedicated team just poop out games to exploit the licenses? I never understood why people get so hung up on release dates...Haven't all the games that are released with show-stopping bugs or tacked-on endings just to make a financial quarter taught us anything? For me the quality of the game is the main issue, and apparently for Blizzard as well.

Also, these are completely separate dev teams I believe. Diablo II was definitely Blizzard North, and I believe that Ghost is their console team.

"Disgusting" seems a leetle melodramatic to me.

Screw Ghost

[Doomstalk]

I'm still waiting for Warcraft Adventures!

Re:Curses.

[feyhunde]

Remember that their parent company VU is one of the world's largest media companies now, has had losses in the range of Bill Gates's entire wealth, and the good chunk of one billion USD that Wow pulls in is the only thing keeping their gaming division afloat. Folks who play wow know that it's not getting alot of it's profits reinvested. Player theory is like Sony Games keeping Sony's other divisions up, VU is using Wow to get urgent hard cash. Because they're such fucking sad sacks of shit, instead of using enough to reinvest in the golden goose, they're forcing it to lay eggs on a starvation diet. VU is gonna kill wow, ghost was just the first fucking step.

Not surprising

[shoptroll]

I really think the problem with Ghost is that they know that it isn't going to whet any Starcraft fan's appetite. On the other hand, they've invested so much (as it seems) into building this that they can't axe it like they did Warcraft Adventures.

Unfortunately, having announced this before the Xbox was originally released and now with the XBox on its way to its deathbed I'm not entirely surprised to see this getting put on hold permenantly or for the next gen depending on which story you want to believe. With it's only target platforms getting phased out at the end of the year is not a good time to release especially if you want to get anything back on a title thats been in development as long as this has.

Let's not forget that its shifted development teams twice and then brought internal when they acquired the last development studio that was working on it. Also, I believe the gameplay and style was different at every E3 it was shown at (based on reports), which doesn't help either.

Sadly, the name is quite fitting now.

Yay!

[Guppy06]

So now the Phantom will have two pack-in games!

This is going to be the best N64 game ever!

Not the first time Blizzard did this

[hellfire]

I'll admit, I'm not following SCG because I don't general play FPS. However, I will say this is not the first time Blizzard has axed a game well into development, and frankly, I applaud them.

They had some kind of weird video RPG story game (it kind of looked like the 80s dragonslayer) that had Thrall as a young orc in a slave camp, and you played him growing up or some weird stuff like that. Weird premise for a game at that time, and they were right to think "no one will buy this it's so 80s, lets kill this crap."

How much crap has been hyped, delayed, delayed again, put on hold, taken off, and then finally brought to market and shown to be the crap it really was. Why put us all through that?

If Ghost is not going to be a game we can expect something different, fun, or unique of, then lets kill it and move on. I never did like the marketing department at Blizzard as their marketing always comes out like everyone of them has an upper cocktail for breakfast and hype there stuff waaaaaaay too much, but kudos to the people at Blizzard who have the balls to say "this is crap, shut it down and stop the bleeding now. We aren't going to make money." And that's the real thing, will SCG be any real breakout exciting title? Or will it look like a Halo clone based off of a PC strategy game who's only fans will be fans of that strategy game?

Real corporations start projects and kill them all the time without releasing to market. Unfortunately software companies push these projects too hard and announce them very very early as compared to the rest of the business world. It's a skill to know when to kill a project just as much as when to start it.