Blizzard President Says Diablo 5 will not be a long wait

[OSLEK-11552]

Gamerant posted this today
(Not allowed to post link)

Blizzard President Mike Ybarra goes on record to state that Diablo 5 won’t spend a decade in development like the last two mainline entries did.

Blizzard President Mike Ybarra recently took online to claim that the wait for Diablo 5 won’t be as long as that for Diablo 4 or the third mainline installment in the franchise. The executive also teased the company’s plans for expanding its latest action RPG, dovetailing with Blizzard’s previously made promise to offer years of post-launch support for Diablo 4.

Diablo 5 might finally be ready to break this pattern of decade-plus development cycles, with Blizzard President Mike Ybarra saying as much in a recent tweet. Responding to some high praise for Diablo 4, the executive claimed that fans will no longer “have to wait so long between titles” moving forward. Ybarra also said that the developer has much more in store for Diablo 4 “and beyond.”

While the industry veteran did not elaborate on the matter, Blizzard’s apparent decision to shorten the development cycles of future Diablo titles could have something to do with the fact that its latest game confirmed that the interest in the series remains at an all-time high. This already became evident back in June, when Diablo 4 smashed Blizzard’s launch record within hours of its full-fledged release.

Another factor that could potentially accelerate the development of future Diablo games is the fact that Activision Blizzard is currently on the verge of a massive sale to Microsoft. The $68.7 billion deal is primarily content-driven, as the tech giant is eager to expand Xbox Game Pass with the likes of Diablo 4 and the Call of Duty franchise. It’s hence possible that Blizzard is already looking to shift its development efforts into a higher gear in preparation to support its would-be parent’s ambitions in the long term.

Nevertheless, Microsoft historically employed a fairly hands-off approach to studio management, so it’s also plausible that the acquisition wouldn’t have an immediate impact on Blizzard’s product roadmaps should it go through. Whatever the case ends up being, Ybarra’s latest comments seem to imply that the developer is already very much thinking about Diablo 5.

Someone please tell Blizzard’s President that twitch says the game is dead. /sarcasm off

[Karbonus-2584]

hehe i told you so.

Diablo 4 is a place holderrrr, they will milk it for 2-3 years and close it

[Vulgrym-1355]

My only wish is they select project leadership and designers that are committed to creating an ARPG, not this half-MMO, half-RPG mess they concocted for D4.

After a decade of D3, I have no idea how these guys shipped a game with no teleporting to dungeons, with dungeons that emphasized questing and ripe with backtracking, with no concept of how mob density should be in an ACTION-rpg, without a UI that supports a loot hunt, with such a poor loot framework etc.

You can see signs that their approach was flawed in almost every facet of the game.

[Marauder-2423]

nevermind
/20 characters

[Karbonus-2584]

If its from Microsoft i WILL wait, but please NOT MMO, it needs to be a pure ARPG

[Parousia-1342]

Oh great. We’re moving to the Call of Duty business model.

[Kirin-21474]

diablo 2024
diablo 2025

[Iggi-11818]

@OSLEK-11552

Blizzard President Mike Ybarra goes on record to state that Diablo 5 won’t spend a decade in development like the last two mainline entries did.

This concerns me, if it took a decade to create D4, how much worse will D5 be without that decade of development? Will we get stick figures fighting stick figures, on a 2d plain? A never ending side-scrolling adventure with 3 classes like in Diablo 1? Diablo 5 - 16 bit.

[JeanWhite-21504]

Imagine a Diablo game every two years

Diablo 5 Resurrection of the cash shop

[Stiffler-11324]

D5 coming out “not long” is probably the worst news we could have heard for Diablo 4…Where do you think all the Diablo dev team’s time and effort is going to be dedicated to now?

They literally sold 10 million copies of this game at $70 a pop, that’s $700 million. Excluding all the crap on the in game cash shop that kids buy with their mom’s credit card. So the suits over there at Activision probably already came up with the plan to just re-skin the D4 engine, make a few tweaks and call it D5…so probably most of the d4 devs have already been reassigned to d5.

They will be milking this cash cow for all it’s worth.

I wonder if they realize how badly they’ve alienated their player base with D4?

i sure as fudge won’t be buying D5.

(edited for my l33t maths skills haha)

[Yogi-1252]

Glad they back their products… Also, please hire people who want to play/test the product.

[Karbonus-2584]

Please do 1 year of closed beta tests

Its finally confirmed we will GET Diablo 5 so its a START

[JoeChill-11627]

Who does he think will buy D5?

There reputation is completely tanked. They have to massively turn D4 around, to even hope to sell D5.

[Karbonus-2584]

@JoeChill-11627

Who does he think will buy D5?

There reputation is completely tanked. They have to massively turn D4 around, to even hope to sell D5.

D3 was trash and people still bought D4

[LavelSoloman-1822]

@OSLEK-11552

Someone please tell Blizzard’s President that twitch says the game is dead. /sarcasm off

Lmfao this clown thinks this is a good thing.

[Katastrophy-11429]

Diablo 5: Return of the Auction House.

[jinyonglee-1479]

@JoeChill-11627

Who does he think will buy D5?

Who? The incredibly naive and lenient people as you can see in the comments. I was among one of them until I experienced both DI and D4 back to back. No longer buying another Blizzard game.

[JoeChill-11627]

They did a lot of work on D3 to get players trust back. RoS and Seasons saved the franchise.

They wont get that opportunity with D4. Market is oversaturated with actual good games and players dont give games seconds chances like they used to.

[Salan-11860]

I will never purchase another Blizzard product, EVER, due to patch 1.1 and how Diablo 4 has been released.

Kthx bye.

[Yogi-1252]

They will never learn from their mistakes, profits over quality.