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'StarCraft is not dead at Blizzard' - Blizzard reportedly 'incubating' another StarCraft shooter after its last attempts failed
Blizzard is developing a StarCraft shooter, led by former Far Cry director Dan Hay, marking a third attempt at a StarCraft shooter after previous cancellations of StarCraft: Ghost and StarCraft: Ares. The project is currently in development and expected to be released on PC and Xbox, further solidifying Microsoft's commitment to the StarCraft franchise after acquiring Activision Blizzard.
Blizzard is reportedly once again "incubating" a shooter based on its seminal sci-fi strategy series StarCraft.
The tidbit comes from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier and his upcoming book about the company called Play Nice, which was discussed at length on Podcast Unlocked. "Yes, that is a project that, as far as I know, is in development," Schreier says at the 44-minute mark, "or at least as of the time I wrote this book, it was in development - so, yes, they are working on a StarCraft shooter. StarCraft is not dead at Blizzard."
Not much is known about the project, aside from the fact that former Far Cry lead Dan Hay is reportedly at the helm. Hay was supposedly overseeing the publisher's first new series since Overwatch - the fairytale survival game Odyssey, which was unceremoniously canceled amid layoffs - but transitioned to StarCraft shortly after.
The third time might just be a charm for Blizzard since, yes, the company has tried and failed to get a similar idea off the ground twice before. StarCraft: Ghost was infamously "postponed" almost two decades ago after an official reveal. Then, the unannounced StarCraft: Ares met the same fate a couple of years back as Blizzard reportedly wanted to focus its efforts on things like Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4. Though, as Schreier notes, "Blizzard can not quit StarCraft shooters."
StarCraft Remastered and StarCraft 2 Remastered were both announced for Game Pass just yesterday at Xbox's Tokyo Game Show stream, where Microsoft Gaming boss Phil Spencer was wearing a big grin and an appropriately StarCraft-themed t-shirt - not to mention that Spencer has been publicly singing the series' praises ever since the Activision Blizzard buyout. So, StarCraft's comeback seems almost inevitable at this point.