Warcraft Mobile Is Coming For Your Smartphone This Year
It looks like we'll be playing Warcraft in some form on our phones, fairly soon. In its latest financial earnings report, Activision Blizzard revealed that it currently has a Warcraft game in the works for mobile devices. Details are slim at this point in time, but we know that the game will be here at some point this year.
The mention of this Warcraft mobile game is brief and included near the beginning of a lengthy financial report for Activision Blizzard's fourth quarter of fiscal year 2021. Giving us a recap of the year for each of Activision Blizzard's major components – Activision, Blizzard, and King – we also get a few statements that look ahead toward what we can expect out of 2022.
"Blizzard is planning new content for the Warcraft franchise in 2022, including new experiences in World and Warcraft and Hearthstone, and getting all-new mobile Warcraft content into players' hands for the first time," the press release says. That's all the financial report says, so, unfortunately, we're stuck imagining what this mobile game could be until Blizzard reveals more.
As IGN notes, rumors of a Warcraft mobile game have been making the rounds for years, first sprouting up in 2017. This isn't the first time we've heard about in-development Warcraft mobile games directly from Blizzard either, as the company confirmed it had a number of mobile titles in development last year. Now, it seems that at least one of them is ready to launch.
The only real hunch we have to go on comes from a 2018 Kotaku write-up that's mostly about the Diablo franchise, which reported that Blizzard had a Warcraft version of Pokemon GO in development with one of its incubation teams. While we're not sure what the ultimate fate of that game was, it's always possible that's the game Blizzard is referencing in its press release.
One thing is for sure: the Warcraft series could use a little love after the debacle that was the launch of Warcraft III Reforged and the rather cool reception we've seen toward World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. Whether or not we'll find that in a mobile game is up in the air, and we're doubting that many of the Blizzard faithful will want to turn to smartphones to get their Warcraft kicks.
For now, we'll just have to wait and see what Blizzard announces next. There are a lot of things in the works at Blizzard HQ, including Diablo Immortal, Diablo IV, Overwatch 2, and a survival game that uses an entirely new IP. Between all that and the pending Microsoft acquisition, 2022 should be a big year for Activision Blizzard, so we'll let you know when there's more to report.