well, you have surprisingly forget to mention that from the PSX to the PS2 time,

most of the "gamers of these time" didn't play the Ninty games released on the N64+GC

also, the Ninty come back is mostly du to Wiisport/Wiifit and has nothing to do with their core franchise from Mario to Kid Icarus (lol).

Blizzard =/= Ninty, really ...

^ Both popular - check
Both immensly succesful - check
Both rediculously profitable - check
Both have games being played years after their release - check
Both cater to all comers - check
Both have an incredibly dedicated fanbase - check

So yeah id say theyre pretty similar

I still play Baldur's Gate 1 + 2 a LOT more than i play Diablo 2. Infact, i cant remember the last time i actually played Diablo 2...

One thing though for sure is that Blizzard are the PC gaming kings.

I have been playing Diablo 2 since its release or so (with breaks here and there). I've tried all those other WRPGs and Diablo clones (sacred, titan quest etc) but no game ever comes close to Diablo 2 for me.

But I'm sure Diablo 3 is going to be that one game to overthrow Diablo 2 for me. I believe in Blizzard :)

"Most" of the gamers of any given period never played any given game (Blizzard or not), so that doesn't really change my point.

I love them to death and still play diablo 2 but they take way too long to get their games out would be my complaint.

They say, well, to polish it, make it perfect.... right. So that's why every Blizzard title ever eventually has like 50 consecutive patches with it? Because it was so perfect to begin with?

Wrong. They release heavily flawed software and then fix it. As opposed to other companies just rushing out their flawed software to make a date and then fixing it with patches. Blizzard just makes you wait forever and then you still have problems, glitches and balancing to be corrected.

So if the end result is patches no matter what, I'd just as soon go ahead and play Diablo 3 now and enjoy the fixes as they come along.

But no, we can just wait another couple years, why not? I mean it's only been, what, well over a decade since the last Diablo came out?

Patches are one thing, but if you want to seriously reinvent a game, you have to do it before it goes gold, right?  I doubt even Blizzard spent an entire decade on polish.  There's only so much you can do to rebalance a game once you've irrevocably put the "core" of it out there.  And no matter how much you beta test you're not going to get as much crash data as when it goes out to ten million people.   

nah, I do not agree

Blizzard are the most maintstream AND hardcore AND respected AND successfull PC developpers since years

Ninty has been completely bashed for years until they came back with the Wii

During these years, they have been nothing but a joke for most of the gamers.

that is pretty different from Blizzrd story

This! ^

Blizzard is the George Lucas of gaming.  They're the five-star restaurant of game devs.

Not everyone who plays a Blizzard game will like it, but Blizzard knows the sweet spot of the PC-gaming market as if it were painted on a 50-foot target in day-glow colors.