Blizzard's focus is on existing properties, president Johanna Faries says: 'We have iconic IP and in many ways it still has a lot of room to scale'

After almost three years as general manager of Call of Duty, Johanna Faries became president of Blizzard in 2014, replacing the outgoing Mike Ybarra. Under her tenure, Blizzard struck a new deal with NetEase, undoing a bitter breakup and reopening the lucrative Chinese market.

Talking to Bloomberg as her second anniversary as president approaches, Faries displays an executive's gift for saying jargon-rich nothings about "IP" and "mindshare" and "leveraging", but does give a slight insight into the company's future plans—which are to focus on existing settings rather than new ones.

"We have iconic IP and in many ways it still has a lot of room to scale," Faries says, "so let's focus in on the cards we have to play. It doesn't mean we won't go into new places and territories, but for right now, let's home in on all the iconic stature that we have in the tank for Blizzard."

I'm not sure anyone was expecting Blizzard to do anything risky under Microsoft, especially if facing pressure to achieve a 30% profit margin like the Xbox division (Faries dodges the question when asked), but I suppose if you're desperate for StarCraft 3 this is a reason to keep hope alive.

Faries says the plan is to ensure there are at least one or two major Blizzard releases every year. "Let's look at it as a portfolio," she says, "and let's make sure that every—let's say calendar year—there are at least one to two really big things that Blizzard is pumping out. And if we can configure our slate accordingly, which we believe we have done, we'll be able to stay top of mind leveraging the multi-franchise opportunities that we have."

World of Warcraft: Midnight, which might be the MMO's biggest expansion yet, is due out on March 2. Diablo 4's next expansion, Lord of Hatred, is due on April 28. Quiet year after that? Yeah, probably not. It'll be the 10th anniversary of Overwatch, and it'll see the return of Blizzcon after all.