StarCraft, announced at BlizzCon just over a week ago, is coming in 2030 to…Xbox. And at least one other platform, apparently.
In the wake of BlizzCon, Kotaku sent several follow-up inquiries to Blizzard about its plans for release dates and platforms. In one question, we noted that StarCraft had, rather unusually, been confirmed for Xbox by a UK social media account. We asked why this platform was announced but no others were, and if Blizzard could confirm what all platforms it would be available on.
In response, a Blizzard spokesperson told me they “can only say for now that StarCraft won’t be exclusive.” When I asked if that meant it would not be an Xbox console exclusive and would come to another console as well, or if that just mean it would also be on PC, I was told that if I ran a story saying StarCraft was Xbox-exclusive, they would have to ask me to correct my story.
I don’t really know what to make of this. The absolute most we can say out of all this is that StarCraft will be on something that isn’t Xbox. But obviously it’s coming to PC, right? The overwhelming majority of games Blizzard has released in its entire 30+ year history have been on PC. Both RTS StarCrafts were explicitly PC games. When I asked Blizzard about Diablo 5‘s platforms after a PR director made a quip about how if Diablo 5 was not on PC, “we’ve got problems” during a press conference, I was told this remark was “an acknowledgement that PC and Battle.net are foundational to Blizzard.” It would be wildly, wildly out of the ordinary not to put the new StarCraft shooter on PC.
But also, I can’t help but read all this as some sort of vague-ish acknowledgement that StarCraft might appear on another console, too. Whenever Xbox uses the phrase “Xbox-exclusive,” it’s always referring to games coming to both Xbox and PC, which encompasses Xbox’s whole ecosystem. Basically nothing anymore is on Xbox, but not PC. So if StarCraft isn’t exclusive, this probably means we’ll see it on PlayStation also? Or…maybe Switch 2?
Make of it what you will. StarCraft is not exclusive.