In a recent presentation to Wall Street, a Vivendi Universal Games representative made a rather shocking announcement, stating that in the future, “All Blizzard franchises will become MMOGs.” The representative claimed that they now have a model in place to develop a Massively Multiplayer Online Game in 3 years for $50 million, as opposed to the 4 1/2 year development time and similar cost of World of Warcraft. The presentation later went on to explain Vivendi’s new two tier strategy for their on-line titles - short session (2 hours or less) on-line games such as the upcoming FreeStyle (an on-line basketball title scheduled for 2007) and long session games (more than 2 hours), which titles such as World of Warcraft most likely fall into.

Various message boards were quickly set ablaze with both regalement and anger. While some people lamented the loss of a true Starcraft sequel, others welcomed the prospect of a Starcraft themed MMO (can anyone say Galaxy of Starcraft?)

Speculation was quickly put to rest however, as a Blizzard representative had this to say on the official World of Warcraft forum:

Nothing in that rumor is true in regards to Blizzard. If I had to guess, there was some confusion between what Vivendi has planned for its its game division versus what Blizzard has planned. While Blizzard is owned by Vivendi, their game division operates seperately from Blizzard.

-Eno

While comforting to hear for the time being, could this be a sign of internal conflict between Blizzard and Vivendi?