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.
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."
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