Blizzard has revealed plans to launch a new Survival game based on a new IP.
While their recent acquisition by Microsoft isn't approved yet, Blizzard has chosen to announce a future project. The project had been teased last week by Mike Ybarra, who said:
“A couple awesome product reviews last week – really proud of the team's focus on our players. Another this week, then 2 more last week of January. Can’t wait until we can share with all of you”
It's obviously early days for the project, with Blizzard putting out feelers for new staff. We know that the game will come to PC and Console and that it will be “full of heroes we have yet to meet”. Survival is a fairly broad term for a game, so it might be something akin to Rust, or it could be more like Minecraft. It's clearly very early days, and knowing Blizzard, it will be a long time until we see any sort of gameplay.
The game will be Blizzard's first new IP since 2016, once it finally comes out. Overwatch itself was Blizzard's first new IP in 17 years, so seeing a new one drop within 10 years of Overwatch is impressive. Now we just await what the other project Mike teased was. With WoW's patch 9.2 coming soon, and an expansion expected, a lot of WoW fans will be hoping the project is WoW related.
Staffing up
The project is clearly a long way off, and judging by the job recruitment page it's certainly a big project. With jobs in Art, Design, and Engineering, it looks like this might be a fresh team within Blizzard. Famously, each of Blizzard's teams focuses on a one-genre at a time. Team 2 for MMOs, Team 1 for RTS titles etc. So this new team is likely to be a new “survival” team, rather than an existing one.
