Recently, Vivendi gave a presentation to Wall Street. A lot of things were mentioned, but this announcement was a standout: "All Blizzard franchises will become MMOGs." And when they said all, they meant ALL! Along with the bold announcement, they also claim that they now have a model to come up with MMOGs in 3 years, and that they are also backed up by a $50 Million budget.

They would be presenting two types of MMOG markets aimed for everyone from the busy executive to the hardcore gamers. The first is the long session games (more than two hours per session) and short session games (less than two hour sessions.) They will also be rolling out a bunch of short session games under the Sierra Online brand. An example is FreeStyle, a pick-up basketball online game scheduled for 2007 release. No details on pricing model for the short session games were announced though.

The "more games and less gamers per game" scenario is something that seems to not be a threat to the company, well if stockbrokers knew more about gaming, then maybe they would have booed the idea right at that moment (ha, ha)!

Blizzard quickly denied the rumors by saying "that rumor is not true in regard to Blizzard...We (Blizzard) believe that the rumor circulating about this subject is based on a misinterpretation of information provided to industry analysts." They also denied that they are developing any MMOGs as of the moment by saying loud and clear that they " do not currently have any MMO development plans beyond the upcoming expansion for World of Warcraft, and furthermore, we don't have any intentions to focus on only one genre or platform with our future games." Nice move indeed!