Back in March 2022, Blizzard shared its Q4 financial report and confirmed that multiple mobile games that are set in the Warcraft universe were in work and the company was once again partnered with Chinese publishing giant NetEase. However, per Bloomberg, one of these game is scrapped due to a financial dispute between Blizzard and NetEase.
Bloomberg’s report claims there were over 100 developers working for over three years on the new World of Warcraft mobile game, but the team has been disbanded by NetEase, following the financing dispute with the two gaming giants.
According to Bloomberg’s sources close to the project, it was called “Project Neptune” and was to be a spin-off to World of Warcraft. Per these sources, “the two companies disagreed over terms and ultimately called a halt to the project, which had been kept under wraps.”
The two companies have worked together on Diablo Immortal as well, and this partnership paid off well for both companies so far. Diablo Immortal’s mobile version alone earned over $100 million and saw over 30 million installs in just two months. However, NetEase was to publish the latest installment in the franchise in China but faced several issues and had to delay the launch until almost the end of July 2022.
Activision Blizzard is one of the very few video game companies to hit its financial targets during the three-month period that ended on June 30, 2022. The company is still in the process of being acquired by Microsoft for $68.7 billion, but the latter’s rival Sony isn’t so keen about the deal and is worried about losing Call of Duty to Xbox.
NEXT: most mobile game genres saw a decline in revenue during H1 2022
