To be honest, Blizzard Entertainment never truly announced their long-in-development MMORPG "Titan." It has been one of those industry secrets...whispered about behind closed doors for years. And now, seven years later, the game is cancelled, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime tells Polygon.
"I wouldn't say no to ever doing an MMO again," Morhaime said. "But I can say that right now, that's not where we want to be spending our time."
This comes in the wake of last year's news that the project code-named "Titan" went back to the drawing board after nearly a decade of development. Rumors once suggested that the project was to be a sci-fi multiplayer game akin to the just released "Destiny." But the company behind "World of Warcraft" never gave a hint as to what their next big MMO would actually have been.
And just like the whisper and shadow "Titan" seemed to be, it has vanished just as quickly and easily as those things seem to do. When pressed, Morhaime gave a few more reasons as to why they cancelled the game after all that development time: "We didn't find the fun... we didn't find the passion. We talked about how we put it through a re-evaluation period, and actually, what we re-evaluated is whether that's the game we really wanted to be making. The answer is no."
Releasing a game that didn't meet players' expectations could have had very diverse effects, so cancelling the game could have been a safe move. However, according to independent analyst Billy Pidgeon, the cancellation may have cost Blizzard "tens of millions, perhaps $50 million or more. This is not an unusual event, however. Blizzard has cancelled several games in various stages of development in the past. Costs for unreleased games can be significant, but launching substandard games can harm the reputation of a successful publisher such as Blizzard. Expenses for development can be considered R&D, and benefits can include invaluable training, IP and technology that can be applied to other games," GamesIndustry.biz reports.
