By the time StarCraft launches in 2030, it will have been nearly 15 years since developer Blizzard released a new game in the long-running science fiction series – so it deserves a big welcome rather than a small splash as an Xbox exclusive. Thankfully, Blizzard just confirmed it won’t be.
Before Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard in a historic 2023 deal, StarCraft was mostly a computer man’s game, anyway. From the first StarCraft in 1998, to the franchise’s most recent installment, StarCraft: Remastered in 2017, games in the series mostly rocketed between Windows and Mac OS. There was that one, short trip to planet Nintendo with StarCraft 64 in 2000, but StarCraft is historically loyal to the noble mouse and keyboard. This seemingly won’t change now that Blizzard’s under Xbox’s jurisdiction, though the publisher refuses to give precise details as to what platforms StarCraft will appear on.
Instead, a Blizzard spokesperson simply told Kotaku in a new report that they “can only say for now that StarCraft won’t be exclusive.” After being pressed on the issue, Blizzard continues to say that referring to the shooter as an “Xbox-exclusive” would be incorrect.
While this is potentially great news for historic StarCraft computer gamers, it might disappoint Xbox fans – if there are any left. Some people seem to have convinced themselves that StarCraft will not only be exclusive, but also limited to the upcoming, next-gen console Xbox Project Helix. But this outcome was always unlikely.
Xbox has a fair-weather friendship with exclusivity. After its Activision Blizzard merger, games were flying all over the place – Call of Duty left PlayStation to appear on all consoles, and things that should have been Xbox blockbusters like Starfield ended up on PlayStation, too… and they weren’t blockbusters.
But Xbox recovered. It started showing off its renewed interest in exclusivity this summer. At the time, chief strategy officer Matthew Ball told GamesRadar+, CEO “Asha [Sharma] believes that to build a platform, you must have exclusive services and software – in this case, games. And so to return our platform to consistent growth, we need a reliable pipeline of exclusive games.”
Strangely, this exclusive games “pipeline” apparently does not include StarCraft, despite the franchise’s huge popularity. But only Blizzard knows why.