F-13.net is carrying a story that reports -- according to a presentation from Vivendi Universal Games -- that Blizzard will be making a massively multiplayer game for each of its major franchises:
"All Blizzard franchises will become MMOGs."
All. They claim they have a model now to develop an MMOG in 3 years for $50 million. WoW cost 50 million euros and took 4 1/2 years.
They have bifurcated the MMOG market into two parts: 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