Tag Archives: the cut scene

Virtual horse nets Blizzard potential $3.5 million (or more) – in 24 hours

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When Blizzard Entertainment put the “Celestian Steed” mount up for sale in its “World of Warcraft” store Thursday, it was quite clear: The virtual horse wouldn’t give players any new abilities; it would only give them a new way to get around the game world. And the speed would depend on their character’s skill level.

Users didn’t care. Within four hours, the queue to buy one was 80,000 people long. Before the day was out, the queue numbered over 140,000 – with an average wait time of seven hours. The virtual pet carried a price tag of $25 – meaning Blizzard could earn more than $3.5 million in less than a day via microtransactions.

Read more at Variety’s The Cut Scene.

Will the last person at Infinity War please turn out the lights?

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We’ve covered the problems at Activision since the abrupt firing of Jason West and Vince Zampella fairly regularly. And since Monday’s news that the duo had started a new development house and aligned themselves with Electronic Arts,  the exodus of talent at their old studio Infinity Ward has gone from a trickle to a steady stream.

Most of the design leads from “Modern Warfare 2” have departed at this point (though none have formally been announced as employees of West and Zampella’s Respawn Entertainment yet). Running a list of names that most people haven’t heard of before this mess doesn’t effectively show the exodus, but the team at PC Gamer UK have found a good way to do so.

Read more at Variety’s The Cut Scene