Blizzard President Offers Development Advice

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Written by BuckGB on September 7th, 2007

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Next, Morhaime said the company always resists the pressure to ship early. Pressure, he said, comes from all around to ship the game as soon as possible, something Blizzard tries to resist as shipping early is "very risky," and, referring to the last point, "shipping a game early can do tremendous damage to a brand or a franchise."

He pleaded that the industry "think long term" and said "shipping early and losing players is very short term mentality." The company fought this battle in 1996 when Diablo missed its holiday release schedule, which, in the end, perhaps impacted day one sales, but went on to sell well throughout 1997.

"Nobody looks back at Diablo and says 'if only they'd released it 3 weeks earlier'," said Morhaime, and through that experience the company was able to educate its parent company that it's quality that matters -- something Blizzard had to deal with again as Burning Crusade missed its own holiday deadline.

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