"Starcraft II by end of 2009", says Activision-Blizzard to GameSpot.

[Alex06]

"Activision Blizzard touches off E3 with a marathon investor call tipping hand on RTS date, PSP Guitar Hero, Call of Duty expanding to new genres, and new James Bond, Tony Hawk, Spider-Man, and Transformers in 2010."

And here's the article:

LOS ANGELES--Activision Blizzard hasn't been overly keen on cooperating with the Entertainment Software Association in recent years. With just a few months to go before the 2008 Electronic Entertainment Expo, Activision and its soon-to-be sibling Vivendi Games created a public stir by abruptly announcing they had departed the ESA and would be skipping its annual event--likely thanks to the industry trade body's 1,600 percent hike in membership dues between 2006 and 2008.

Of course, that didn't stop the publisher from cashing in on the massive amount of publicity associated with E3 2008. Just a short distance away from the site of E3 proper at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Activision held its own press junket, making high-profile game announcements for a new Wolfenstein and Singularity, both from Raven Software, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2: Fusion from Vicarious Visions.

In February, the ESA managed to partially bring Activision Blizzard back into the fold, with the megapublisher announcing that it would be exhibiting its wares in an official capacity at E3 2009, if not rejoining the trade association in full.

Still, Activision Blizzard continues to skirt around the ESA's timetable, opting to hold its de facto press conference via webcast on Sunday. The move eschews an E3 tradition that typically sees Microsoft kicking off the week's proceedings with its Monday morning press conference.

So what does Activision have in store? Modern Warfare 2 details? An official reveal for the next Call of Duty? Yet one more Guitar Hero to add to the stack? Time will soon tell, as Activision Blizzard executives take the line.

Source:
http://e3.gamespot.com/story/6210427...9-webcast-live

To be honest, I'm more keen on a Q1 2010 release, with at most a Q2 2010 release...2009 still seems a little early, especially considering we're going to hit beta in July. The game would have to be released on Christmas week...Which is not the best of ideas, TBH. Late November/Early December seems like a wiser choice. This means less than 5 months of beta testing. Beta would start mid-to-late July and end in late October or early November, leaving just about 4 months of beta testing.

This doesn't seem right. Blizzard ends a beta 1 month before the game releases. I remember with WarCraft 3...The beta was announced officially, they started taking beta applications 1 weeks later, and the beta started 2 weeks after that. Meaning we'll have to hear about beta in late June...which seems about right, perhaps. But then again, they have changed the whole beta application thing and are launching BNet 2.0...So I guess that seems possible.

Anyway, their schedule's pretty tight if they wanna get it out by the end of the year. And I have to say, Blizzard must be really prepared for this. For some reason, I was expecting BlizzCon 2009 to be the place where BNet 2.0 is revealed and everything about it is presented to us. All the new features, functions, etc.

Early 2010 seemed more believable. But then, they'll have to fight with C&C4 (I'm pretty sure that will be the next C&C game from what I heard, behind the scenes...) and SupCom 2, which are both likely going to be released around Q1-Q2 of next year. The former should also be announced soon enough (I'd even bet money on it being C&C4, but this is beside the point).

EDIT: Here's the shacknews article: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/58877

[ChaosSmurf]

TBH, from the shacknews article on the same subject, it sounded to me like Mike was just going "Yeah, it'd be nice to release it this year, but if it isn't good we won't".

I don't know if they really have to worry about release dates - at this point it's a guaranteed success. Although, I guess if it looks like a post-Christmas-but-not-late-january release, they'll just leave the beta on and fine tune things for a 0 day patch.

[FoxSpirit]

"We're targeting an end of year release--this year--for StarCraft 2," said Morhaime of the PC strategy title, "But as always, we won't release it until it meets our standards and the expectations of our players."

[ArcherofAiur]

Remember how many times they pushed back WC3.

[Blazur]

There will be a Starcraft II beta test later this summer. Watch the start date of the beta coincide with BlizzCon.

Source

[Pick]

No surprise, I think this is what we were all expecting. Still nice to hear an official source though.

[Nicol Bolas]

Watch the start date of the beta coincide with BlizzCon.

That would make no sense. The people who would want to attend BlizzCon are exactly the people who would want to play the Beta. You'd be asking them to put off the Beta in favor of BlizzCon, and that's just not going to happen for some of them.

[Noise]

When they say the end of this year, that means they will release it in 2014.

SupCom 2 eh? That's gonna be sweet.

[Aldrius]

There will be a Starcraft II beta test later this summer. Watch the start date of the beta coincide with BlizzCon.

Ehh... doubtful it'll take that long.

They likely want to test the beta OVER the summer. Not... at the end of the summer.

They might not hit that target date, but looking at the trends, we'll could be seeing it very soon.

Or not...

[Roobster]

I still believe it will be April 1st, 2010. Blizzard has not released a new game for many years and probably wants to make sure this one is absolutely perfect to show everyone that they still got "it", so it is a distinct possibility they will delay the game so that it will be as perfect as possible.