A lot has been said about the treasure trove of IP that Xbox would own after the Activision Blizzard merger, especially things like Call of Duty, Crash and Spyro, amongst other franchises. However, Blizzard has a lot to bring to the table as well, especially more PC-centric offerings, and Xbox's Phil Spencer has been talking about that fact in a recent interview with Wired.
The chat is mostly focused on Age of Empires after its recent console announcement, but Phil was also quizzed about franchises such as StarCraft and Warcraft, which could soon be Xbox-owned if the deal goes through. Here's some of what Phil had to say on those two titles:
"Not only StarCraft, but WarCraft, when you think about the heritage of RTS games that we're talking about here, specifically from Blizzard.
And I don't have any concrete plans today because I can't really get in and work with the teams. But StarCraft was a seminal moment in gaming, right? From an esports perspective, from RTS on console perspective, and from just an RTS storytelling perspective in the genre.!"
Funnily enough, StarCraft actually made its way to console via a Nintendo 64 port back in the day, so there's a precedent there for that IP at least to make its way to Xbox at some point. We're not saying it's likely, but Phil and his team are clearly fans of these two franchises and will look to explore as many Activision Blizzard IP as possible once the deal is wrapped up... well, if the deal is wrapped up!
"The thought of being able to think about what could happen with those franchises is pretty exciting to me, as somebody who spent a lot of hours playing those games."