Activision talks Blizzard's new IP, Tony Hawk's snowboarding, Ture Crime delay @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on August 06, 2010

News: And Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock has been pushed back a week.

Activision held their quarterly financial conference yesterday and confirmed a few rumors, delayed a few games and dropped a big bombshell about Blizzard's next project.

First off, Activision's Chief Operating Officer, Thomas Tippl, announced that the release of True Crime: Hong Kong has been pushed back to an undetermined 2011 date. Previously scheduled to come out this Fall, Tippl said this delay "gives the development team more time to deliver the exceptional entertainment experience they envision." He also assured investors that this delay doesn't signal a lack of confidence in True Crime, instead saying the publisher planned to devote additional resources to making it the best game possible.

Confirming another rumor, Tippl confirmed that Tony Hawk: Shred will include "skateboarding and snowboarding gameplay" when it ships this Fall, "before Thanksgiving."

Finally, the COO announced that Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock has been given a September 28 release date.

Moving on to the Blizzard half of Activision Blizzard, Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard, announced that World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is still on track for a 2010 release and that the team is currently learning a lot from the beta test.

Finally, Activision CEO (and all-around controversy magnet), Bobby Kotick, has revealed that Blizzard's super secret project is actually a brand new property: "[R]emember, we have two enormous investments: one in Bungie and the other is another project at Blizzard that we haven't given a lot of visibility to. Those are going to be entirely new intellectual properties."

While this game will be the first time in fifteen years that Blizzard has expanded outside their Diablo/StarCraft/WarCraft comfort zone, Kotick also cautioned that gamers won't be playing it anytime soon: "[W]ith the recognition that the way to build them is take long amounts of time, lots of capable talent, an enormous amount of capital and you have to have a real roadmap for innovation and creativity. And I think that those are going to be two very good examples from the ground up original ideas."

That's it. We'll have more on everything else Activision soon.