Yeah, that's about the time the official transition started if I recall correctly. I really dont know what they could've done if those were the only 3 projects they meant by MULTIPLE.
I have a feeling that those guys are "choking" on the other projects that they know are in the works but aren't allowed to speak about. I feel sort of sorry for the Diablo team.
There are no other projects
If they even had a sliver of prototype for D4 they would mention it now to prevent loss of name.
If anything they are working on pre-production for something. But they are unsure what it will be or how it will play. So they can not announce nothing.
And even in best scenario it could not be released in 6-7 years from now
Yeah, that's about the time the official transition started if I recall correctly. I really dont know what they could've done if those were the only 3 projects they meant by MULTIPLE.
I have a feeling that those guys are "choking" on the other projects that they know are in the works but aren't allowed to speak about. I feel sort of sorry for the Diablo team.
Diablo Immortal - World and Q&A - 5:45 pm to 6:30 pm pst
This would be worth the virtual ticket price after mobile's reaction.
Oh my -- saw this somewhere else where Steve Jobs was speaking about how companies can get "out of touch" with making good products. It's enlightening in this situation.
Looks to me like they finally ran out of idea's to steal from other companies. Would've thought if they're doing remakes they'd at least do a remake of the one original thing they ever came up with (Diablo). Also, maybe they can do a remake of the original bnet while they're at it, as it still even now shits all over the incarnation they're currently running.
I am telling you that Blizzard knew about the backlash and was ready to do damage control months ago. None of this is surprising to them - again because they know that 95% of Blizzcon crowd are not mobile players.
Blizzard cares greatly about things that would impact their bottom line - upset forum posters and blizzcon crowd - they weren't gonna blow money on a mobile game anyways - so Blizzard is like - Fuck it - we'll manage the fallout but Diablo Immortal can still be a major cash cow for us.
Which is precisely why Blizzcon is a weird place to make the announcement. They could have generated the same buzz with 1/100th of the negative fan reaction if they had chosen to do the reveal anywhere other than Blizzcon.
Expected or not the shitstorm of negativity they're getting is something you generally want to avoid.
Not necessarily - it might help Diablo Immortal catch the ear of mobile players - could be the ripple that Blizzard can magnify into a tidal wave with marketing dollars and get the game to the top of mobile charts.
A product announcement that upsets those who were never gonna buy it - not really a bad thing. Creating a ripple in the news that will bubble up said product to the attention of actual intended consumers - not bad either.
Ah dear DM Kano. I logged into account after year not posting just to answer this.
Mobile gaming market is made up of bored woman on the commute , 8-12 year old kids and people that have 2-3 minutes to burn.
None of them dont know or give a damn about Diablo in any way or form.
Entering mobile game with property like Diablo is huge gamble. Where Blizzard has much more to lose than to gain.
Up to now Blizzard was known for their quality. Their word was their bond. People bought their games in millions on launch just because it was known that Bilzzard knew exactly what players want and how to make it.
To be booed on live stage , during your own convention, that people payed lot of money to attend. Thats bad, even unheared of.
There is no price for spinning that. And surely not marketing something to unexisting populus.
Now that only leave us with China. It is a big question mark. Some say mobile gaming is the gaming in China, and Blizzard basically made this for them.
Again. As people said. They could just left that announcement for ChinaJoy. And Spin Diablo Mobile as side project in western media, and as exclusive focus in chinese media. And none would be the wiser.
Huge fail fail fail. That sounds like EAfication ,corruption of the marketing suits to the highest degree in Blizzard.
Basically people in charge know nothing about the games , but pretend they know all.
You Kano know what I am talking about very well
I do want to chime in on the demographics. For mobile gaming in general, they skew slightly male (~60/40) with the key demographic being 22-26. We are also seeing a solid core gamer that is willing to put down ~1k for a new phone every 2 years. This is all very similar to what we saw in PC decades ago, and is following a similar trend.
I dont disagree that Blizzard marketing blew this opportunity, and could easily have made this release less problematic. I would not say that this was done intentionally... it is just an indication that they are really out of touch with who they were presenting too. This is an industry problem, caused by development teams being too insular, and buying too much of their own hype. However, you could point to the same problematic approach for other big companies as well (Apple for example).
Maybe this is the real reason Mike left. Not necessarily because of Diablo Mobile itself (since he obviously knew about this for 1-2 years), but the direction the company is going. Next year, they will announce WoW's next expansion more-than-likely while sliding Overwatch mobile in there. Couple that with having both existing people and having to hire new people that care more about a paycheck instead of the product. I think people who've interacted with Blizzard products from early wow and prior understand this a little better since you might've felt like the company you were buying stuff from were gamers first and a business 2nd.
I think, what's worse than all of this are the moderator post responses on each game's forum over the past year-ish. There was a joke thread about a month or 2 ago about Activision HQ being a raid in WoW, which had so many MvPs and a Blue just jumping on anyone talking about it, all saying the same thing "Activision does not influence the development of Blizzard games," like anyone with a brain can't tell that it obviously does. Who do you think Blizzard gets its developmental budget from....? Obviously, they dont tell Blizzard dev teams what to do, but if the word 'mobile' or 'pacing' is mentioned in a meeting, are we really supposed to be shocked at them announcing a mobile game or locked features?
Fuck everything! First they don't remaster the first two Warcrafts(which needs a remaster more WC 1 or 3) and now this...? They're chasing the $ a bit too hardcore for my taste.
How dare you not be super hyped about Warcraft 3 reforged.
Well, nobody here is saying their move does not make sense @DMKano We are saying we dislike it.
They have their right to opt to pull some candy crush fiscal year carnival move...
And we have the right to dislike it because as fans of their IPs it does not take our desires in consideration.
I don't get your point in trying to see their side. We know their side: Money. Edit to add: We just expected more from them. Because we like them. Such cheap move is something below them.
I am saying that us disliking it has zero impact on Blizzards bottom line in case of Diablo mobile.
This is literally none of Blizzards concern - they knew that Diablo mobile would have zero appeal to your average Blizzcon patron - these are not your mobile players.
They still chose to announce it at Blizzcon because they lose nothing if the crowd was disappointed, so might as well do it.
Mobile players are often unaware of upcoming games because every day there's a huge number of them released. The ones that bubble to the top have huge marketing campaigns behind them - Blizzard can do that no problem.
People have every right to be upset about whatever they want - it's a bit delusional to think that Blizzard has any obligations to live up to everyone's expectations as far as what products they release.
The core issue is - unmet expectations create disappointment, and that is not Blizzards problem, people have to manage their own expectations
You think no one at Blizzard cares that this is happening?
I'm sorry but you're wrong. They are busting their balls right now trying to keep it quiet and minimize the damage. They would not be doing that if it didn't matter.
I am telling you that Blizzard knew about the backlash and was ready to do damage control months ago.
Well, the stuttering and stammering guys on the stage that everyone could see were stunned by the crowd's reaction would beg to disagree with you.
Follow that up by the utter lack of simultaneous PR spin in the media and it's clear to everyone that this was NOT a reaction that Blizzard expected.
Did they recently hire Scott Hartsman or something?
Even as a PR fuck up - do you believe that this will have any impact on Diablo Immortal sales?
You do know that when a company knows something that doesnt mean that every single employee is given the privilege?
Blizzard higher ups probably laughed at the stammering and said "those poor bastards" I guess they didnt want to demoralize the presentation team hehe.
Blizzard knew about the backlash, obviously not everyone working there knew.
But hey Diablo Immortal will live or die by a how well Blizzard markets this globally - again the mobile masses dont know what Diablo and certainly completely unaware of any kind of a PR issue.
The thing is as usual the only people outraged here are those who are not the intended players - aka non-mobile players, so they pissed off the customers who would have never spent a cent on Diablo Immortal - yeah heh
See @Superman0X post above. Those folks in the theatre were very much the target audience, or at least part of it.
If you think Blizzard expected the backlash and sent those poor folks out to slaughter totally unprepared then you are totally disconnected from reality.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Well, nobody here is saying their move does not make sense @DMKano We are saying we dislike it.
They have their right to opt to pull some candy crush fiscal year carnival move...
And we have the right to dislike it because as fans of their IPs it does not take our desires in consideration.
I don't get your point in trying to see their side. We know their side: Money. Edit to add: We just expected more from them. Because we like them. Such cheap move is something below them.
I am saying that us disliking it has zero impact on Blizzards bottom line in case of Diablo mobile.
This is literally none of Blizzards concern - they knew that Diablo mobile would have zero appeal to your average Blizzcon patron - these are not your mobile players.
They still chose to announce it at Blizzcon because they lose nothing if the crowd was disappointed, so might as well do it.
Mobile players are often unaware of upcoming games because every day there's a huge number of them released. The ones that bubble to the top have huge marketing campaigns behind them - Blizzard can do that no problem.
People have every right to be upset about whatever they want - it's a bit delusional to think that Blizzard has any obligations to live up to everyone's expectations as far as what products they release.
The core issue is - unmet expectations create disappointment, and that is not Blizzards problem, people have to manage their own expectations
You think no one at Blizzard cares that this is happening?
I'm sorry but you're wrong. They are busting their balls right now trying to keep it quiet and minimize the damage. They would not be doing that if it didn't matter.
I am telling you that Blizzard knew about the backlash and was ready to do damage control months ago.
Well, the stuttering and stammering guys on the stage that everyone could see were stunned by the crowd's reaction would beg to disagree with you.
Follow that up by the utter lack of simultaneous PR spin in the media and it's clear to everyone that this was NOT a reaction that Blizzard expected.
Did they recently hire Scott Hartsman or something?
Even as a PR fuck up - do you believe that this will have any impact on Diablo Immortal sales?
You do know that when a company knows something that doesnt mean that every single employee is given the privilege?
Blizzard higher ups probably laughed at the stammering and said "those poor bastards" I guess they didnt want to demoralize the presentation team hehe.
Blizzard knew about the backlash, obviously not everyone working there knew.
But hey Diablo Immortal will live or die by a how well Blizzard markets this globally - again the mobile masses dont know what Diablo and certainly completely unaware of any kind of a PR issue.
The thing is as usual the only people outraged here are those who are not the intended players - aka non-mobile players, so they pissed off the customers who would have never spent a cent on Diablo Immortal - yeah heh
I think people are trying to equate this to EA in the wrong way, thinking that downvotes will ultimately influence the bottomline. You look at Madden/FIFA etc, those are still EA's top income regardless of what anyone says about them. Even with the whole Battlefront thing, EA still had probably their best year financially. The Battlefront "clean-up" wasn't because of the outrage itself but more about them potentially losing the Star Wars IP to work with. There's nothing like that at stack with Activision/Blizzard so I do feel you are right about the revenue being uneffected in the end. What's more sad is I dont even think anyone remembers how much on-par Activision's micro-transactions in CoD WW2 were at the same time the Battlefront issue was occurring. Or better yet, remember that patent Activision got having to do with micro-transaction influence last year? Yeah I barely remember too.
So they just keep reloading that video until they get a response they like? niiiice and apparently deleting negative comments. Finally done with Blizzard
Gotta to ask cuz I don't know. Is mobile gaming big in China?
mobile is much biger than PC and much more profit dats why alot company gona to mobile $$$$$
Thanks, I figured that was the case. The China market is huge. The profit margin on this must be so huge that they don't care about pissing off PC fans.
Once read that other countries are much more into using their cell phone for everything and not so much for PCs. Which explains why those markets want more mobile games, in the US we can't even use our mobiles for vending machine purchases like in a lot of other countries yet.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Well that Blizzard has "lost their ways" is hard for me to jump aboard on. Diablo3 has moved in a bad direction for a long time (which a Diablo4 could fix), and I have not cared about WoW for many years now, but then they give is something awesome like Overwatch. Everyone expected a mobile Diablo of some sorts, but hoped for a Diablo4 also or instead, so it is not that they are making a mobile Diablo game, but that they are proudly announcing it at a convention full of fans who play games on pc, and regard mobile games as shit (rightfully so).
This feels worse, for me, than if they had announced nothing at all. I would certainly feel disappointed but I wouldn't feel like I was being pushed aside for a newer and larger audience.
PC gaming already has so few strongholds in the market now and Blizzard was one of the few that I felt I could rely on. It's a big reason why I continued to support them, even after my serious dislike for the RMAH in Diablo 3 and a few other missteps. Using an IP that was made wildly popular because of your PC audience to make a mobile game, while simultaneously offering nothing to PC players, feels more like a slap in the face than slight disappointment.
So the Diablo mobile title isn't even an original Blizzard work?
They literally made a big announcement about how they were licensing skins to NetEase?
/Facepalm
I agree with @Superman0X, they are wayyyyy out of touch with their general fanbase, and it's starting to snowball between BfA and this Blizzcon announcement.
Just looked at the youtube feed, I didn't see a single good comment posted, granted I didn't open up any of the replies. Think they really screw up this time. Unfortunately though this will still make them millions because it is directed at the fan base they are trying to get. The new generation that walks around looking down all the time. Gone are the people that made the company what it was and the new people don't have the same anything to be honest to keep the company going. It will take many years but the company is slowly dying by its own hand. If you are an old fart like myself sitting at a computer you are not their target audience anymore.
So they just keep reloading that video until they get a response they like? niiiice and apparently deleting negative comments. Finally done with Blizzard
Again - if you worked for Blizzard marketing team you would be doing the same thing.
The downvoting is being done by a PC crowd - not mobile gamers - which Blizzard is well aware of so yep - they will keep doing whatever it takes to minimize the pissed off mob who was not the intended market of ruining this for them.
If the mobile gamers were coming out in droves and downvoting - you'd have a point.
But again put it all into perspective and their actions make sense
I play mobile games and down voted once. I'll bet literally 100% of the downvotes came from people that play mobile games at least once a week.
So they just keep reloading that video until they get a response they like? niiiice and apparently deleting negative comments. Finally done with Blizzard
Again - if you worked for Blizzard marketing team you would be doing the same thing.
The downvoting is being done by a PC crowd - not mobile gamers - which Blizzard is well aware of so yep - they will keep doing whatever it takes to minimize the pissed off mob who was not the intended market of ruining this for them.
If the mobile gamers were coming out in droves and downvoting - you'd have a point.
But again put it all into perspective and their actions make sense
I play mobile games and down voted once. I'll bet literally 100% of the downvotes came from people that play mobile games at least once a week.
I play spider solitaire while I'm sitting on the shitter.
So they just keep reloading that video until they get a response they like? niiiice and apparently deleting negative comments. Finally done with Blizzard
Again - if you worked for Blizzard marketing team you would be doing the same thing.
The downvoting is being done by a PC crowd - not mobile gamers - which Blizzard is well aware of so yep - they will keep doing whatever it takes to minimize the pissed off mob who was not the intended market of ruining this for them.
If the mobile gamers were coming out in droves and downvoting - you'd have a point.
But again put it all into perspective and their actions make sense
Comments
If they even had a sliver of prototype for D4 they would mention it now to prevent loss of name.
If anything they are working on pre-production for something. But they are unsure what it will be or how it will play. So they can not announce nothing.
And even in best scenario it could not be released in 6-7 years from now
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
https://imgur.com/a/02F13bm
(via Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/9tp0vh/here_is_the_current_line_for_diablo_mobile_at/)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I dont disagree that Blizzard marketing blew this opportunity, and could easily have made this release less problematic. I would not say that this was done intentionally... it is just an indication that they are really out of touch with who they were presenting too. This is an industry problem, caused by development teams being too insular, and buying too much of their own hype. However, you could point to the same problematic approach for other big companies as well (Apple for example).
If you think Blizzard expected the backlash and sent those poor folks out to slaughter totally unprepared then you are totally disconnected from reality.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Everyone expected a mobile Diablo of some sorts, but hoped for a Diablo4 also or instead, so it is not that they are making a mobile Diablo game, but that they are proudly announcing it at a convention full of fans who play games on pc, and regard mobile games as shit (rightfully so).
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
PC gaming already has so few strongholds in the market now and Blizzard was one of the few that I felt I could rely on. It's a big reason why I continued to support them, even after my serious dislike for the RMAH in Diablo 3 and a few other missteps. Using an IP that was made wildly popular because of your PC audience to make a mobile game, while simultaneously offering nothing to PC players, feels more like a slap in the face than slight disappointment.
This announcement stung.
They literally made a big announcement about how they were licensing skins to NetEase?
/Facepalm
I agree with @Superman0X, they are wayyyyy out of touch with their general fanbase, and it's starting to snowball between BfA and this Blizzcon announcement.
thats the phrase that comes to mind
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee