Morhaime: Being first won't guarantee console success

Mike Morhaime, CEO of World of Warcraft developer Blizzard, has said he isn't worried about another company establishing itself as the lead MMO provider on consoles and that the developer is not bound to any platform - a strategy he claimed is supported by the Activision merger, which would allow Blizzard to move into the console space whenever it decides to go.

When asked by GamesIndustry.biz at a press coference at BlizzCon, if the company risked letting the console MMO market be led by another company, the CEO undermined the value of being first to a market and stressed that success "comes down to games".

"I think that, it comes down to games, so I'm not too worried about being first to make a claim or first to take a market share," he said. "Actually Blizzard has rarely been the first to create a genre, unless you consider Diablo a new genre, nobody said that at the time, they all said it wasn't new."

"For us we're looking for what is the next thing, what is the next step, what is the next evolution and I think that it's not really dependant on platform."

Morhaime went on to explain that the company's partnership with Activision would allow them access to the console market when they wanted.

"That argument probably gets even more powerful with the partnership with Activision," he added. "Activision will have a strong business on consoles so whenever Blizzard decides to go and enter the console market we have this huge infrastructure of people that is already successful in the console business, so I don't think we're losing anything."