Blizzard has big plans for Diablo 5, but it won’t be out until spring 2029. A new StarCraft is finally in development, but fans will have to wait until 2030 to actually play it. Why is Blizzard hyping high-profile sequels and spin-offs that are still many years away? According to the Xbox subsidiary’s president, Johanna Faries, it’s about staking out the next half-decade of big promises and proving to fans it can stick to them.
“We want to convey confidence in some of our biggest bets coming forward,” Faries told Bloomberg in a new interview. “We’re a Blizzard that’s going to ship, and ship big, and ship on time, and all hands on deck to set those projects up for success.”
It’s a bold strategy considering how frequently schedules change, especially for projects that might for all intents and purposes still be in pre-production. Diablo 4 was first announced back at BlizzCon 2019. It was supposed to come out three years later, but ended up being delayed until 2023 amid tumult and turnover at Blizzard.
Staking out dates and committing to them has not traditionally been Blizzard’s thing. That’s more of a Call of Duty trick, with armies of studios toiling away in lockstep to make sure an expensive new blockbuster sequel ships every year. It’s unknown whether this new outlook is inspired in part by a new strategy under Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who reportedly is pushing studios to double down on big sequels and spin-offs, and deliver them more consistently.
But Blizzard’s ambitious slate of upcoming content revealed at BlizzCon 2026 will also have to contend with another 1,600 rolling layoffs taking place within Xbox over the next year. Faries, who talked about the fan convention acting as an oasis for developers and players alike, told Bloomberg that her number one priority is protecting Blizzard’s creative culture.
“Preserving that has been my ultimate focus,” she said. “The unique special sauce that is Blizzard both culturally and creatively. And to the extent that we can perform well for Microsoft, I think that should be seen as a mutual win.”
