World of Warcraft and Diablo developer Blizzard Entertainment added a box-art image for a Diablo 3 beta over the weekend — a sign that the company might be close to a final release date for the game.
Diablo 3 is one of the most anticipated titles of the year. The last Diablo game came out in 2000 and still boasts a big player base. It’s nothing compared to Blizzard Entertainment’s most popular online role-playing game, World of Warcraft, which has around 11.4 million subscribers. But the game’s hack-and-slash and loot-seeking formula proved to be incredibly popular and the game has persisted for more than a decade. It even inspired a number of dungeon crawler copycats like Torchlight.
Blizzard Entertainment chief executive Mike Morhaime also said the company was targeting the third quarter this year for an external Diablo 3 beta, which falls between July 1 and September 30, on the company’s most recent earnings conference call. The company is also apparently planning a press tour for the game in August. The last time the company scheduled a press briefing so close to an expected release date for a game was just before the company announced the beta of the third expansion pack for World of Warcraft, called Cataclysm.
Morhaime said the company was targeting a fourth-quarter release for the game, but did not give an official release date on the company’s most recent earnings call.
A leaked launch schedule for some of Blizzard Entertainment’s top franchises, including World of Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft noted a fourth-quarter release for Diablo 3 and indicated that a localized version of the game for Brazil would come out in the third quarter this year, which Blizzard Entertainment unveiled last Thursday.
“The development team is working hard to try and launch Diablo III this year,” Morhaime said. “But I want to be clear that we do not have an official release date or window yet. As always, we will not compromise the quality of the game in order to hit a window.”
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