Activision Blizzard, Inc. ATVI recently announced that its newest game — Heroes of the Storm — is set to hit the market on Jun 2 while players can access its open beta version from May 19.
Heroes of the Storm is an action-strategy game inspired by Activision’s hit games like Diablo, StarCraft and WarCraft.
The new game will operate as a cooperative play, but a "quick match" mode feature has been added to allow players to play against each other. The game will feature more than 30 characters called heroes and seven different play zones or "battlegrounds." One of the USPs of this free-to-play game is that players can customize their heroes with different skins and switch between different mounts to cross the battlegrounds in various ways.
While Heroes of the Storm may be one of the most anticipated launches in the free-to-play video game category, reportedly, Activision shareholders are not too keen about it.
According to reports, Activision has several other video games in its pipeline including 2v2 mode on hit franchise Hearthstone, the next installment of Call of Duty and Guitar Heroes. Shareholders are of the opinion that a free-to-play game such as Heroes of the Storm could have a detrimental effect on the other game releases.
Reportedly, shareholders do not expect much from Heroes of the Storm since themultiplayer online battle arena game segment already has significant competition from games like AirMech, Arena of Fate, Dead Island: Epidemicand Sins of a Dark Age. In addition, the company faces stiff competition from mobile game developers like Electronic Arts Inc. EA, Zynga, Inc. ZNGA and Glu Mobile, Inc. GLUU in the free-to-play game category.
However, it is expected that the company’s solid game support following its release could help Heroes of the Storm rank higher in themultiplayer online game genre and boost sales despite a muted debut.
Activision currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
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