Diablo Mobile Backlash [Nov 03, 2018, 1:00 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
Most BlizzCon announcements are met with enthusiasm from the gathering of
Blizzard fans, but the company really stepped in it with yesterday's
announcement of Diablo: Immortal, a new installment in the action/RPG series
being created for mobile devices. The response
on the Diablo Reddit raking
Blizzard over the coals suggests there may have been a better way to handle
this, as they made the mistake of
hyping this announcement which raised hopes for a proper PC game. As an
example of the discontent this is causing, one can look at the
Diablo Immortal Cinematic
Trailer on YouTube. Blizzard's cinematics usually generate incredibly
positive responses, but as of this writing, the clip has 7.7k upvotes and 232k
downvotes.
eRe4s3r wrote on Nov 3, 2018, 20:05:Blackhawk wrote on Nov 3, 2018, 19:44:
Blizzard did exactly this same thing once before, in 2002 with Starcraft: Ghost. They teased a big announcement was coming for Starcraft. They hyped it. They then did this big website tease that had everyone on the edge of their seats.
When it turned out the be a console exclusive action game, people went ape. They were genuinely pissed off.
You build hype, but you don't give the wrong message, or it will backfire.
Makes you wonder though why they don't do what EVERYONE wants, heck a Diablo 4, Warcraft 4 or Starcraft would have been neat, but replaying the same game from 10 years ago in 4k not so much and playing Diablo on a tablet isn't my idea of fun, I get headache from staring at these (comparative) tiny screens.
My friend and I were talking about this today and we both think that it boils down to one simple word: monetization.
His thinking was that Diablo 3 doesn't make Blizzard money now and that they are in fact, losing money by keeping the D3 servers going after all this time even though sales have waned. When you buy Diablo 3x, Blizzard gets the initial sales but now that the Auction House is gone, they don't have a way to milk players going forward.
Keep in mind that Blizzard even found a way to monetize Starcraft 2 by adding that co-op mode and selling "Heroes" just for that mode and other cosmetics. Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch and Hearthstone have lootboxes-type of mechanics and WoW has a subscription fee, expansions AND micro-transactions (mounts etc.) and all of those games have constant and hefty updates. Diablo 3 has... Seasons. The last big update that Diablo 3 had was when the pay-for Necromancer came out and that had very little content aside from that one class. If Blizzard ever made a Diablo 4 or a Warcraft 4, I would think that they'd make it online-only and add in a ton of micro-transactions or lootboxes to the base game.
And then here comes Diablo Immortal. "Hey remember that money-sink Diablo franchise? Guess what guys? We know of a Chinese Studio that can reskin thair failed mobile game with our Diablo crap, make it mobile-only and add a shitload of micro-transactions! Hurry, someone give me a promotion for this genius idea!"
This comment was edited on Nov 3, 2018, 23:48.
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