As Blizzard continues to flesh its PC storefront Battle.net out with the likes of The Witcher 3, Xbox CEO and executive vice president Asha Sharma doubles down on what the World of Warcraft studio has said before – it’s not trying to create another Steam.
Yes, Blizzard partnered with CD Projekt Red to see The Witcher 3 make its way onto its own storefront – but that doesn’t mean Battle.net will continue to accept just any game willy-nilly, or that it’s a one-to-one Steam competitor.
Andrew Guerrero, Blizzard’s vice president of product management and global insight, confirmed as much last month, saying the company isn’t “trying to do the Steam or Epic Games Store thing.”
He said Blizzard already has its “audience,” a “passionate core of people that play Blizzard games and games similar to Blizzard,” assuring that they’d only “get after” titles for Battle.net should they make sense for that core.
Sharma is now saying the same herself, telling Xbox in an internal town hall (as per Windows Central) that Battle.net will grow, and is actually nearly retaining as many users as Steam already – but it’ll never be Steam.
She hints that it’ll instead be a more selective, curated storefront than platforms like Steam or even Microsoft’s Xbox PC. Sharma also teases that the partnership bringing with CD Projekt Red bringing games like The Witcher 3 to Battle.net will grow, too, although carefully.
In her words, “We will do it the right way for those communities.” So, there’s clearly a sense of executives taking utmost care with the whole situation.
As it stands now, Battle.net really isn’t anything like Steam, anyway. It’s primarily a home for Blizzard’s own lineup of games, from World of Warcraft to Diablo 4 and the like.
Sure, there are other partner titles, like Call of Duty entries and Xbox Game Studios gems such as Avowed and Sea of Thieves, but it truly is a more particular store than its competitors.
How will that work out in the long run? Well, I suppose only time will tell.