Blizzard Entertainment Inc. will release its first multiplayer, action role-playing video game for mobile devices in another evolutionary turn for the Irvine-based publishing giant.
“Diablo Immortal,” co-developed with NetEase Inc. (Nasdaq: NTES), a Beijing-based internet technology company, will be available on Android and iOS devices.
Blizzard, Orange County’s largest software company, hasn’t released a launch date or price for the video game, which will be an extension of its popular Diablo gaming franchise.
“With their incredible passion for Diablo and proven mobile expertise, the development team has spawned an ultra-responsive and breathtakingly beautiful mobile game, and we can’t wait for players to get their hands on it,” Blizzard President J. Allen Brack said in a press release.
In the early going, Diablo’s legion of fans don’t seem too enamored with navigating through the dark, gothic terrains of the fantasy world on hand-held devices rather than their personal computers. They’ve aired more than 100,000 complaints on YouTube and Reddit, among other sites.
The Diablo news topped the headlines at Blizzard’s annual fan fest, Blizzcon, held Nov. 2 and 3 at the Anaheim Convention Center. It drew 40,000 creatively-dressed attendees and gaming enthusiasts.
Exec Swap
The addition of a mobile gaming platform and addressing online criticism of the yet-to-be released product are among the first challenges facing Brack, who recently replaced Michael Morhaime at the helm of Blizzard, which has some 2,000 employees at its sprawling Spectrum-area campus.
The unit of Santa Monica-based Activision Blizzard Inc. (Nasdaq:ATVI) reported $2.1 billion in revenue last year.
Morhaime, along with fellow University of California-Los Angeles alums Allen Adham and Frank Pearce, launched Silicon & Synapse, Blizzard’s predecessor in 1991.
Morhaime is remaining as an adviser to the company.
Blizzcon “will always feel like home to me,” he told attendees at the event.
Brack, a 24-year gaming veteran who joined Blizzard 12 years ago, most recently served as executive producer and senior vice president for the company’s “World of Warcraft,” the top subscription-based “massively multiplayer online role-playing game” in the world.
“One thing that won’t change going forward—our deeply held commitments that are core to who we are as a company: to gameplay first, to quality in everything we do, and to listening to and partnering with our community,” Brack said in a blog post last month following the leadership announcement.
The mobile device-focused chapter in the Diablo franchise takes place between the end of “Diablo II: Lord of Destruction” and the beginning of “Diablo III.”
In 2012, Diablo III broke the record for the fastest-selling PC game of all time, burning through 3.5 million copies the day it went on sale, and 5.1 million units in its first seven days. Those figures didn’t include the 1.2 million players who received the game as part of their annual WoW subscriptions.
NetEase has long been a Blizzard partner in China’s expanding gaming market. It has already developed several non-Blizzard related mobile gaming hits in China, including “Westward Journey” and “Twilight Pioneers” that feature similar storylines and settings as Diablo’s.
That’s fueled part of the online blowback to the Nov. 4 Blizzard announcement of the new game, which coincided with a nearly 7% drop in share price for parent Activision Blizzard. Its shares took another big hit last week after the company reported declines in third-quarter revenue, earnings and active monthly users, and provided guidance in the current quarter below expectations. The barrage of bad news sent shares down an additional 14% to $56.62 and a $43.1 billion market cap.
Cellphones aren’t the only new place Blizzard games are being distributed.
In September, the Business Journal reported that “Diablo III Eternal Collection,” which includes the original “Diablo III,” “Reaper of Souls” expansion, and the “Rise of the Necromancer” pack, will be available this year on the hand-held Nintendo Switch, another first for Blizzard.
The package sells for about $60.
