With the first time addition of a non Blizzard game to Battlenet and the fact that it's Destiny 2 can we assume Activision wants to craft it's own PC marketplace?
This press release specifically states that they're only bringing Destiny 2 to battle.net, and have no future plans to put any non-Blizzard games there.
I love how people are never going to stop calling it Battle.net, despite Blizzard's best efforts.
Seriously, when did they write that press release, because I thought Blizzard scrubbed all reference to Battle.net from any of their services.
What's extra crazy is that Mike Morhaime called it Battle.net live on Bungie's stage TODAY.
I think their branding is that the app is called Blizzard App, but the server farm/technology is still Battle.net? No real idea. Seems like a very pointless change.
The Blizzard app is absolutely fantastic, super fast and easy to use. I get that everything not on steam is automatically a flaming dumpster fire that deserves to be purged, but seriously, it's good.
This makes me very happy. Not only is Battle.net (Blizzard.net? I don't even know) something I use literally everyday (Overwatch is my go to game), but I actually didn't know Destiny 2 was even coming to Pc. I enjoyed my time with the first title. I burnt out of course and never came close to the hardcore audience that stuck with the game long term, but I will definitely jump on board even if it is just more of the same. In fact I might stay with it longer since I'll be able to play it my office rather than the living room (on the Ps4).
I don't use Battle.Net but was it seriously renamed to simply "Blizzard"? So if a developer says "we are bringing our game to Blizzard" it's unclear if they mean being published by or using their online gaming service.
Seriously what a poor name, the ability to easily distinguish things is important.
3) Nexus Challenge but for Destiny rather than Overwatch (or, better still, both)
I think number three is almost guaranteed. The other two are long shots since no non-Blizzard characters have gotten into Heroes... but it could happen, and it could trick Destiny players into playing Heroes.
Part of me feels weird about this. Like the blizzard app should just be a holy sanctum of blizzard made games. The other part realizes I'd probably be more likely to play destiny 2 if it was on a launcher I already use frequently and have a ton of friends on. I guess I'm okay with this.
You know what's really weird with this whole naming stuff is even blizzard is still calling it battle.net The quote below is directly from a link on the platform that redirects to the blizzard site. It talks about the partnership. I can only assume they're invoking the old name due to the wide recognition of it. And if that's the case it once again makes me wonder why they changed it at all.
We want to let everyone know that a new game will be appearing alongside your favorite Blizzard games—one that’s a little different from what you might normally expect. Bungie’s upcoming first-person action game Destiny 2 will be joining the party! We’re excited to announce that we're partnering with Bungie and Activision to support the PC version of Destiny 2 exclusively via Battle.net.
We’re big fans of Destiny here at Blizzard, and we’re honored to be able to help the talented folks at Bungie and Activision bring their much-anticipated sequel to a new platform. Being on Battle.net will allow Destiny 2 to plug in to our existing global network, freeing up the developers at Bungie to focus their energy and resources on making the best and most fun game they possibly can. This also means Destiny 2 players will have access to our online social functionality, including chat with friends, the ability to see which of their friends are online in Destiny 2 or in Blizzard games, and the ability to stream gameplay directly to Facebook.
It makes a lot of sense, actually think it's pretty damn smart to try to tap in to Blizzard's playerbase/community like this.
At the same time those are the sort of people that are used to multiplayer-loot centric games who are the ones most likely to be critical of it. They're exactly the type of person who instantly saw all the shortcomings of the first Destiny as a loot game, as a sudo mmo, the loot, the inventory, the quest management, instances, the grind loops etc... Destiny was great if you we're not hugely into those types of games (and people on consoles were less likely to have been exposed to quality titles in the genre) but suffered from a plethora backwards design choices that most games of that type have already figured out years ago.
So basically Destiny 2 better step the fuck up from Destiny 1 if it wants that player market share from Blizzard to be significant. But if they do step up = $$$
Does this mean other games are going to come to the Blizzard platform too?
Our focus in terms of supporting non-Blizzard games is solely around Destiny 2. Aside from potentially evaluating needs or opportunities for future Activision games, we don’t have any short- or long-term plans to support third-party games with Battle.net. It’s important to us to maintain our quality standards for any experience or service we’re putting in front of our players, which represents a big investment of time and effort on our part, so this is not something we’re jumping into lightly.
It's not going to be a new Activision PC platform according to Blizzard but nothing says no. This could also be a way of getting Destiny into E-Sports. Crucible pretty much became the home of hardcore Destiny fans by the end of Year Two.
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