Last October, Battle.net project director Greg Canessa took the stage to talk about the future of the encompassing online service Battle.net. During his presentation, he said that it would be 18 months until the next Starcraft II installment, Heart of the Swarm, would see the light of day. That timing would put the release of the hotly anticipated pseudo-sequel to the critically acclaimed real-time strategy game in either March or April 2012.

This week, Canessa's timing of the next Starcraft II was seconded by another Blizzard Entertainment employee. Speaking with Eurogamer, StarCraft II game director Dustin Browder was asked when he expects Heart of the Swarm to launch.

"I don't know the answer to that," said Browder. "I don't think you'll be playing it this year. That seems very unlikely to me. But we're pounding away on it as fast as we possibly can."

As for the current installment of Starcraft II, Wings of Liberty, the game earned awards for Outstanding Achievement in Online Gameplay and Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year at last night's Interactive Achievement Awards, held in conjunction with the DICE Summit in Las Vegas. For more on that game, check out GameSpot's review.

Read more: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6298804.html

This seemed likely. Now when do I get to play Diablo III, that's the question. 

No surprise here. Not at all.

" No surprise here. Not at all. "

I can see this game becoming the new Half Life 2, we will see the second game in another year and a half and then never hear anything about the third part ever again. :/

I didn't expect it out this year anyway. Those folks over at Blizzard keep some pretty luxurious release schedules.

" This seemed likely. Now when do I get to play Diablo III, that's the question.  "

More like unlikely to come out this decade amirite? 
 
No but seriously this was not a surprise.

Regardless of the end quality of the developer, this is some terrible dev-cycle habits that they have.  Not as bad as a few others of course, but still.
 
Thank goodness there are many other games that will hold over to forget about this until they actually have a playable version of it for us to see.  That and the actual core game being out to hold die-hards over.

" @XII_Sniper said:

" This seemed likely. Now when do I get to play Diablo III, that's the question.  "

Activision pretty much told investors recently that they are not counting on either Starcraft II's next edition or Diablo III for a 2011 release.  Hell, the date of the Diablo beta hasn't even been announced yet. "