Following Blizzard's announcement that Diablo: Immortal would be launching on mobile, fan reaction was overwhelmingly negative. In the aftermath, Blizzard Executive Producer Allen Adham has come forward to make it clear that more Diablo games are on the way.
We have said that we have multiple Diablo teams working on multiple Diablo projects and that remains true, even after releasing [Diablo 3 for Nintendo] Switch and announcing Diablo: Immortal. We still have multiple Diablo teams working on multiple unannounced Diablo projects. Diablo is a tentpole franchise for us. And it always will be. We love it. We hope our fans understand what we're saying when we say that.
The above is from a Polygon interview between Allen Adham and Blizzard Production Director Dan Elggren. The two were in damage control mode, as one of their big announcements at this weekend's BlizzCon event turned out to be a giant flop.
At the end of the keynote address, Blizzard revealed Diablo: Immortal -- a mobile game featuring selectable classes, new and upgradable abilities, and a whole bunch of new dungeons to dive into. The announcement was met with a heck of a lot of heckling. The trailer has received an impressive number of down votes, and social media and message boards are overflowing with comments from folks who feel wronged in some way.
As Allen Adham tries to make clear, Immortal is just one of several Diablo games currently in development, which reads like yet another extremely obvious hint that Diablo IV is on the way. What's important to note is that Blizzard already made it clear that a mainline Diablo would not be announced during BlizzCon this year, but much of the negative reaction seems to stem from the fact that the community expected it anyway.
It's hard to blame Blizzard for wanting to make an announcement for what they anticipate will be a big game during their big annual event. But given how poorly mobile announcements have done at shows like this in the past, perhaps their timing was a bit tone-deaf. As Allen Adham admits himself in the interview, BlizzCon is traditionally attended by the mouse and keyboard crowd, so of course a mobile game isn't going to cause much hype.
Still, he goes on to make a very important point: Mobile is an absolutely massive, lucrative market. The best comparison I can think of is American football. Talk to fans of the sport and many will tell you it's the greatest athletic competition in the world, and that everybody loves it. Outside of the U.S., though, the sport is barely a blip on the radar. That's how traditional gamers seem to view mobile. PC and console are king and nobody want to play a game on mobile, right? The fact of the matter is that mobile is an insanely popular market and, as Allen Adham states, Blizzard would be crazy not to want to get a Diablo game on the platform.
But the important takeaway here is that, even with Immortal coming to mobile platforms, Blizzard is still working on other games in the Diablo franchise.
