Blizzard faced a huge community backlash after revealing Diablo Immortal at Blizzcon. Many fans were hoping for a new Diablo game or at least an expansion and thus a mobile game felt like a slap in the face since most Blizzard and Diablo fans are not mobile gamers at all. However, a new video has surfaced in which Blizzard confirms that they are working on mobile games for all of their IPs, not just Diablo.
The video, uploaded by Korean YouTube account 리뷰빌런 하텍, is of a press conference that took place during Blizzcon. In the video, executive producer Allen Adham answers a question regarding Diablo Immortal and says the following, “In terms of Blizzard’s approach to mobile gaming, many of us over the last few years have shifted from playing primarily desktop to playing many hours on mobile, and we have many of our best developers now working on new mobile titles across all of our IPs. Some of them are with external partners, like Diablo: Immortal; many of them are being developed internally only, and we’ll have information to share on those in the future. I will say also that we have more new products in development today at Blizzard than we’ve ever had in our history and our future is very bright.”
Shifting their focus from PC and console over to mobile gaming is not a very unsurprising move. The mobile gaming market is currently already larger than the PC and console market combined and will reach a huge size that will be impossible for the PC and console markets to reach. However, the way that they announced their mobile game is mostly the cause of this huge mess that Blizzard is in right now. Diablo fans had high expectations going into Blizzcon as Blizzard teased that they were working on multiple Diablo project beforehand. Only revealing Diablo Immortal and nothing else regarding Diablo was definitely a bad move.
Although the other mobile games that they are working on are still a mystery, I doubt they will receive the same negative reception that Diablo Immortal has received. I do not expect games like World of Warcraft or Overwatch to completely switch over to mobile devices but rather to be some sort of side-content like Fallout: Shelter was for Bethesda. Another company that is currently doing great on mobile is Nintendo but they’re also creating high-quality content for on the Switch and 3DS showing that what Blizzard might attempt can definitely be done.