Blizzard is Playing 4D Chess with Diablo 5's Early Reveal

It's not a shock that Blizzard intends to make Diablo 5, nor is it a shock that the studio has started work on it. But it is a shock, or at least surprising, that Blizzard chose to announce Diablo 5. And it was doubly surprising that Blizzard stuck a release window on the game: spring 2029, which is both very far off, and far sooner than Diablo 4 fans were prepared for. Blizzard came ready to talk in broad terms about the game, but didn't show anything substantive beyond a cinematic teaser, some concept art, and some mocked-up inventory UI.

Talking about a project this early is not, currently, the done thing in the game industry. Blizzard knows better than most how early reveals can lead to overextended PR campaigns, delays, and frustrated fans, and has shied away from the tactic more recently. Bethesda's Todd Howard has admitted that he regrets announcing The Elder Scrolls 6 so early.

There's clearly been a change of heart at Blizzard. The BlizzCon reveal of the next StarCraft, an open-world shooter, was expected, but announcing a 2030 release for it is a wild strategic swerve the flies in the face of the received wisdom in game marketing. What's going on?

For starters, Blizzard has a new boss: Asha Sharma, Xbox CEO since early this year. Sharma has made it clear that she wants Microsoft's vast family of game studios to ship more games, more frequently in their biggest franchises. She has reportedly ordered a focus on Fallout (last mainline title: 9 years ago) and The Elder Scrolls (last mainline title: 15 years ago), to the extent that Obsidian Entertainment has had to essentially drop everything to spin up a new Fallout game. In this new era, Blizzard must be anxious to prevent its titles falling into that company. There hasn't been a new StarCraft release in a decade, and the gaps between Diablo 2, 3, and 4 were each in the 11-12 year region.

Sharma also seems keen for studios to communicate their long-term franchise plans to the public — or else the studios are keen to do so to look good to the boss. Recently, Bethesda took the unusual step of lifting the curtain on its wider plans for Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, seemingly in response to the restructuring and layoffs sweeping the Xbox organization.

You can interpret the Diablo 5 and StarCraft reveals the same way. Blizzard staff are still waiting to see what the impact of the Xbox restructuring will be on them; as Xbox's top-performing studio, Blizzard will probably be safer than most, but it's still operating in an atmosphere of extreme uncertainty. In this context, planting two massive flags in the ground is a statement of intent, intended to be heard by Xbox management, Microsoft shareholders, and Blizzard's own staff, as well as players.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

In Diablo 5's case, though, there are other factors at work. With its announcement came the news that Diablo 4 will receive no more major expansions, and that its lifespan as the prime Diablo game would be just six years — brief by live-service standards (and Diablo standards). Blizzard had previously communicated, if only in vague terms, that it expected Diablo 4 to have a long life supported by regular expansions. Former Diablo franchise boss Rod Fergusson loved to bang this drum; now he's out, which is presumably not a coincidence. (This shift mirrors the situation around Halo Infinite, another Xbox game whose plans for a decade of live-service expansions were shuttered.)

There has clearly been a pivot, with resources shifted off Diablo 4 and onto Diablo 5 earlier than planned to bring forward the sequel's release. But this put Blizzard in a bind; it wouldn't have been able to go much longer without announcing a new Diablo 4 expansion before fans knew something was up. In this sense, its hand was forced into announcing Diablo 5 now.

For Diablo 4 players, it's something of a rug-pull, resulting in many reacting less favorably to the announcement of a sequel than you might expect. This is understandable, because Diablo 4, with its persistent, online open world and aggressive live-service structure, is halfway to being an MMO. Players invest a lot of time and money in these games in the expectation that they will last.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

But the operative word here is "halfway." Live-service games that adopt the structure and gameplay loops of MMOs without committing to their business models, production pipelines, and all-encompassing game design can be very successful, but they do actually have a shelf-life, as Bungie has discovered with Destiny 2. That game was struggling to sustain its storyline, develop its systems, and maintain player interest long before Bungie decided to throw in the towelahead of its ninth anniversary. At the time, it reportedly didn't even have Destiny 3 lined up.

I suspect Blizzard knows this, and knows that Diablo 4, for all its huge success and the high-quality Lord of Hatred expansion, is showing some strain as a long-term live-service game. The design of Diablo 5 is tantamount to an admission that the attempt to hybridize Diablo with World of Warcraft didn't really work. The persistent open world is out, replaced with a Diablo 2-style procedurally generated map that will be different each time you play. Itemization, too, seems to come straight out of the Diablo 2 playbook, with fewer armor slots to fill and inventory Tetris to manage. It looks like Diablo 5 is going to be a classical action-RPG.

As much as Blizzard seems to be answering its master's call, I think it has its own reasons for pivoting to Diablo 5 and revealing it so early. Diablo 4 has been a big hit. But it's better for it to go out on a high than for Blizzard's developers to mire themselves in managing its inevitable decline.