What just happened? Bad news for anyone hoping to play Overwatch 2 or Diablo IV this year. During Activision Blizzard’s recent conference call to discuss its quarterly earnings, CFO Dennis Durkin revealed that the company isn’t planning to launch Overwatch 2 or Diablo IV in 2021.
Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV were announced during the annual BlizzCon conference in 2019. Both appeared to be in the early stages of development as pre-orders and launch dates weren’t mentioned.
During the earnings call, executives additionally noted that Diablo Immortal was “extremely well-received” during recent regional testing. Further testing is being planned ahead of a general launch later this year, we’re told.
Last May, we heard through the rumor mill that Blizzard was moving ahead with an official remaster of Diablo II despite the fact that the game’s source code had been lost years ago.
Durkin during the earnings call potentially addressed this, saying that “we have a few other things up our sleeve in terms of remastered content that we’ll unveil in due course which should provide a further opportunity for us this year.”
BlizzCon normally takes place at the end of the year but with the pandemic, organizers elected to postpone the 2020 convention. Instead, BlizzCon will now take place later this month as an online event. Given the close proximity to the earnings call, it’s unlikely that we will hear anything more about Overwatch 2 or Diablo IV during the event.