Blizzard was reportedly working on multiple mobile games ahead of the official announcement for tower defence game, Arclight Rumble, although it appears that some didn’t survive the development process. A new report from journalist Jez Corden, corroborated by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, claims the developer was in the midst of creating a Pokemon Go-style augmented reality (AR) game before it was cancelled.
‘For those DM’ing me about the Warcraft mobile games, I believe the Pokemon Go-like Warcraft game was actually cancelled a while ago,’ Corden wrote on Twitter. ‘The [mobile game] being announced this week is not Pokemon Go-like at all, but sounds like it’ll be pretty great from what I’ve heard.’
‘Can confirm this,’ wrote Schreier in a quote tweet. ‘The Warcraft Pokemon Go game, one of the two mentioned in my first tweet, was cancelled earlier this year.’
In late April, Schreier had reported that ‘after a very long dry spell, Blizzard [was] preparing to release a bunch of new games’. These included two mobile Warcraft games that had reportedly been in development within Blizzard’s incubation system for several years.
One is assumed to be Arclight Rumble, while the other is the mystery Pokemon Go-like AR game.
Read: Warcraft Arclight Rumble is Blizzard taking mobile games seriously
While the existence of the game was reportedly known for some time, it now appears the entire project has been scrapped, with no indication of what the original plans for the title actually were.
Given it’s been frequently compared to Pokemon Go, it’s assumed the title would have allowed players to explore the real world, overlayed with Warcraft goodies via augmented reality – potentially fantasy pets – but not much is tangibly known about what was planned, or why it was cancelled.
It could be that Blizzard chose to focus its resources on making Arclight Rumble as good as it possibly could be – or that AR games have drifted away from vogue since the early enthusiasm for Pokemon Go. Whatever the case, it appears the company is now placing their bets directly on the success of Arclight Rumble going forward.
As a new interpretation of the Warcraft universe, broken down into bite-sized strategy gameplay, it’s likely to attract a fresh player base – one that could buoy Blizzard’s newest foray into the mobile games arena.
