While avoiding giving a hard date, Activision Blizzard has said that StarCraft II should be with us by the end of the year.

This came from Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, at Activision Blizzard's pre-E3 presentation. He did note that the game will only be shipped when it's done.

The re-vamped Battle.net will be launched alongside the game.

The promised StarCraft II beta will come later this summer.

That all fits, of course, with the previous assertion that the game will be out sometime this year. The 'by the end of 2009' qualification suggests that we'll be seeing it later in the year rather than sooner.

Diablo III was apparently name-checked in the presentation, though there was no release date dished up.

Expect more on both games at August's BlizzCon, which sold out at the weekend.

^{Source: GameSpot}