BlizzCon 2018 were hoping for "Diablo 2 Resurrected" news
My first exposure to "feeding" was Fate/Grand Order, which was originally launched to Japan in July of 2015. It earned a total of 4 billion dollars in the world in 2019. In order to create a character that was the best that it can be, I needed to obtain copies of each. Then, when a particular banner came along I paid upward of D2R Items 300 euros to purchase the 5-star character I'd wanted since the beginning of time. But I didn't get the duplicates I needed to realize this character's full potential. The rates for the most valuable 5-star characters now being around 1.1%, it's not a surprise that I failed to acquire a copy the character when I was engaging in this game (which I've since removed). As of the end of July, 2021 Fate/Grand Order was the seventh highest grossing mobile game of all time, putting it in front of Konami's Puzzle & Dragons, which also, I'm guessing, is also a gacha game.
In a GDC 2021 speech, Genshin Impact developer Hoyoverse (previously Mihoyo) outright admitted that the process of creating characters revolved around generating the maximum amount of capital from its fans. For example, the Raiden Shogun and Kokomi characters reruns that took place in March 2022 alone earned the company over $33 million in revenues.
The moment was immortalized in memes and mockery, much of it rooted in disappointment of the audience: People attending BlizzCon 2018 were hoping for "Diablo 2 Resurrected" news. It also stemmed from an unease about smartphones and games played in the West, where adoption of smartphones as a gaming platform is much slower than the rest around the globe.
Since the game's release, "Diablo Immortal" has raised its profile, and test results from beta and alpha versions proved the game was an incredibly full-on, iconic Diablo experience. (It was also helpful that Blizzard made the decision to release its game onto PC.) In the Diablo series is among the most influential in modern game design, popularizing gameplay loops that focus on acquiring random "loot" to make your role-playing character more powerful. "Diablo 2," which was recently remastered, cemented the loop, while "Diablo 3" which Cheng was also working on, simplified and enhanced it.
While the 2018 moment was hard for Cheng and his team, he said it only strengthened their determination to show "Immortal" as a game worthy of the Diablo series, since its mobile launch is free and opens the franchise to its biggest potential players yet. The game is scheduled to launch on June 2.
Cheng's enthusiasm about the project was evident in an interview he recently conducted. "I do believe that 'Diablo: Immortal' is going to change a lot of people's perception of the notion of an app for mobile devices," Cheng told The Washington Post. "That was one of our main goals since the beginning. Let's set the bar higher for what gamers can expect from the game on mobile."
"I have three kids , and they're all teenagers, and they don't have the same idea of a distinction between consoles, PCs or mobile," Cheng said. "They love gaming on all sorts of platforms."
The game will see simultaneous launch on PC with full keyboard and mouse controller support, as well as cross progression and cross play with mobile support at launch. This move was inspired by the beta test , where gaming content creators expressed that they'd require an emulated version of the D2R Ladder Items buy game so that they could showcase the game on their platforms as per Rod Fergusson, general manager of the Diablo franchise.
