Blizzard Entertainment is now officially a partof Microsoft. The closing of the company’s $69 billion deal to purchase Actvision Blizzard in early October means that Microsoft owns the rights to some of gaming’s biggest franchises.
That includes World of Warcraft, the massively multiplayer RPG that’s set in Blizzard’s Warcraft universe. It launched for Windows and Mac in 2004, and while its player levels are likely not at its October 2010 peak of over 10 million active players, it’s likely there are still millions of players online.
During Blizzcon 2023 this weekend, Blizzard revealed an ambitious MCU-like plan to develop three upcoming paid expansions to World of Warcraft that will be under one overall title, The Worldsoul Saga. However, some people are also speculating that Blizzard might also be working on a plan to bring the game to Xbox consoles as well, due to now being owned by Microsoft.
GamesRadar chatted at Blizzcon with Holly Longdale, Blizzard’s vice president and executive producer for World of Warcraft, and when the subject of if Blizzard has thought about bringing the MMO to Xbox consoles came up, she stated, “Of course! Yeah, we talk about it all the time.”
Unfortunately, it sounds like any plans to bring World of Warcraft to consoles are taking a backseat to The Worldsong Saga. Longdale stated stated:
“We’ve got these three expansions and we are so excited about them. But, yeah, of course. It would be very insincere to say that we’re not, like… of course we’re talking about that,” she chuckles again, before adding: “We are Microsoft now.”
When asked if there were any technical issues that might hold back bringing World of Warcraft to consoles, Longdale stated, “Well, it depends on who you ask. I don’t think it is, frankly. I think we’re pretty well positioned, which is kind of why we talk about it.” She also admitted the WoW team hasn’t “actually had a conversation yet” with their new Microsoft owners about bringing the game to console or adding World of Warcraft to its PC Game Pass service.