Activision-Blizzard at Odds Over Diablo III’s Auction House

As PC Gamer reports, going by Activision-Blizzard’s Q3 2011 Earnings Call, the two branches of the company, Activision and Blizzard respectively, may have different ideas over the purpose of the real money auction house that is going to be introduced in Diablo III. Here are the quotes from the article:

Speaking about the World of Warcraft annual pass (which comes with a free copy of Diablo 3), CFO of Activision Blizzard, Thomas Tippl said: (The larger the Diablo community is, and the larger the marketplace around Diablo’s real money auction house is, the greater the opportunity to also generate income and have a long tail behind Diablo.)

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At least Blizzard co-founder, Mike Morhaime, got the final word at the Investor’s Call. And reassuring words they were, placing the emphasis back on the game experience instead of cold, hard cash.

(Let me add to that. If you look at Diablo 2, and even Diablo 1 player bahaviors, there was a need to trade items between players. We found that a lot of our players were trading items on third party sites. The main reason we’re doing [the auction house] is to provide them with a safe and secure environment which we think it going to make for a better game.)