Blizzard Wants to Support Hearthstone for 20 Years, Talks Console Plans

As part of a new interview with GameSpot, Blizzard Entertainment executive producer Hamilton Chu says the developer wants to support Hearthstone for 10-20 years and teases plans for a console version.

"We want Hearthstone to be around for 10 to 20 years," Chu told us. "That's what Blizzard does."

As such, players can expect Blizzard to add new cards over the years. But this comes with a potential problem. "Adding more cards is going to make it harder and harder for new players," Chu admitted.

He went on to say that Blizzard doesn't exactly have a solution in mind just yet. It's possible that the developer will delete some cards over time, but nothing has been decided.

"I mean, I don't know," Chu said when asked if Blizzard would cull cards. "This is something we're going to have to figure out how to manage and how to address in the long term. There's no easy answer."

Hearthstone staying online for the next two decades could be a major business boon for Blizzard. According to a new report, the free-to-play collectible card game brings in $20 million per month.

Also in our interview, Chu discussed the possibility of Hearthstone coming to consoles some day. He said this is a popular request from fans, and Blizzard, too, would like to launch the game on more platforms. But he cautioned that bringing Hearthstone to consoles would require "a lot of hard work" and if it does happen, it probably won't be soon.

"We hear this a lot," Chu said. "We're console players, too. So definitely, we'd love to get Hearthstone out to more players and let them play however they want. You want to play on the couch in front of a big TV, and I totally get that. It's definitely something we think about.

"I mean, it's a lot of hard work," he added. "To make Hearthstone feel as good on phone as it did on PC and tablet took a while. So for us, it would be no less important to nail the experience on console than any other platform. So if we did it, we'd want to take our time to do it right."

Hearthstone is currently available for PC, smartphones, and tablets. The game's next expansion, The Grand Tournament, launches on August 24. For more on it, check out all the new Hero and Neutral cards.

As of May, Hearthstone had topped 30 million players.