Almost 15 years since the last new entry in the series, it sounds like Nexon could end up being the company behind the StarCraft revival real-time strategy fans have been begging for.
Last month, it was reported that four game companies – Nexon, Krafton, Netmarble, and NCSoft – were all competing in an attempt to secure global publishing rights and work on new games in the StarCraft series.
A machine-translated article from Asia Today claimed that each company was putting forward different ideas for what they could do with the series, with some apparently even pitching these suggestions to Blizzard in person.
Now, it's been reported that this battle is seemingly over. A new report from Korean news outlet MTN (which we've machine translated, but it's also been partially translated by South Korean news account @KoreaXboxnews) states that Nexon (which developed The First Descendant and more recently published The First Berserker: Khazan) has been chosen as Blizzard's "preferred bidder," entering into "main negotiations" with the company.
It's not currently clear what kind of new game (or games) StarCraft could see under Nexon. It was previously very vaguely said that the company had suggested some kind of unique way to use the IP, which could mean a whole lot of things. If it's to be believed, and plans haven't changed, it does seem to suggest that it wouldn't simply tread the same ground as previous entries in the RTS series.
Curiously, the same new report claims that, alongside its StarCraft-shaped win, Nexon has also bagged distribution rights for an upcoming mobile Overwatch game in Japan and Korea.
Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier reported on the apparent development of an Overwatch mobile game in his book about Blizzard which was published last year, so this isn't the first we've heard of a release like this, although MTN now says that it's thought to be a MOBA title.
Be sure to take all of this with a pinch of salt for the time being, anyway, as none of this has been publicly confirmed. StarCraft fans are long overdue a win, though, so here's hoping that on the back of whispers about a StarCraft shooter, the series might finally get the attention it deserves.
In the meantime, be sure to check out the best strategy games you can play now.
