Speaking at the recentReuters’ Global Media Summit, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick stated that we probably won’t see the company expand into the Facebook or mobile gaming markets. ”Right now we don’t see an opportunity for us to participate in that market,” Kotick said.

There’s a very important distinction to be made here, though. Actually, a few since Kotick-haters will likely jump on this just like everything else he says. Firstly, Bobby Kotick isn’t the guy you want to talk to if you’re looking for hint drops on upcoming titles; he’s the person you talk to about business-level decisions.

Secondly, he specifically said that we won’t see Activision Blizzard branching out into developing games for Facebook and mobile phones. They’re probably going to be leaving that to Electronic Arts for the foreseeable future. ”We don’t view the App Store as a really big opportunity for dedicated games,” he said.

Dedicated games is the important wording here. He isn’t saying they’re going to ignore those markets when it makes sense for already-existing properties. That would be marketing suicide on a level we haven’t seen before. Take the Azeroth’s Fortune promotion — that was almost entirely driven by Facebook.

Other examples of taking advantage of those markets for existing products are the WoWarmory.com/WoW-remote.xml” rel=”nofollow”>Mobile Armory and WoWarmory.com/WoW-remote.xml” rel=”nofollow”>Remote Auction House of World of Warcraft. And of course, the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator. So don’t get too worried, it’s still possible we’ll see World of Warcraft on smartphones, but don’t expect Activision Blizzard to go out of their way to develop new titles specifically for those platforms in the near term.

[Via Gamasutra]