Diablo Immortal Declared ‘Biggest Launch in Franchise History’

Diablo Immortal has now been available for a week, having fully launched on June 2. The days since have been filled with endless discourse regarding the qualities and faults of Diablo Immortal, making it easily the most divisive release of 2022. One point that few would disagree with, however, is that Diablo Immortal was going to initially be very successful. That’s now proven true, with Blizzard itself confirming that Diablo Immortal is the “biggest” launch in the Diablo franchise’s history.

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Blizzard’s announcement was shared via the official Diablo Immortal Twitter account. The message shared declared Diablo Immortal the “biggest launch in franchise history” and thanked the heroes of Sanctuary. The attached graphic provided a more specific framing for what the “biggest launch” for Diablo really meant. It confirms that Diablo Immortal has been installed over 10 million times since it was released. This detail, like much regarding Diablo Immortal, is going to prove controversial.


The issue is that Diablo Immortal is a free-to-play game. Players across the world could download Diablo Immortal with no upfront cost, regardless of whether they have any intention to actually play or dedicate much if any time to it. Further, previous Diablo games have all launched exclusively on PC. Diablo 3 only arrived on PlayStation and Xbox consoles well over a year after its PC launch. Suffice to say, total launch week installations isn’t a particularly fair number to base a comparison on.

Creating a fair comparison doesn’t seem to be Blizzard’s prerogative in this situation, however. The company wants to celebrate the success of Diablo Immortal while also marketing the idea that the game is popular and successful. It also needs to do that without courting further controversy. Total installations would be less likely to provoke a response than total hours played or total spending, needless to say.


Critics of Diablo Immortal will also take this as evidence of their point that the free-to-play mobile game is putting players off. Diablo 3, for example, is said to have sold over 30 million copies in total, a number that’s grown due to expanded content and additional platforms. Critics will argue that Diablo Immortal‘s playerbase will only shrink, due to the game’s heavily monetized design.

10 million installs do make clear that Diablo Immortal is a launch success, of course. It’s not ground-shaking, however. There are nearly 100 past mobile games with over 20 million installs, for example. Diablo Immortal has a long way to go to break into that list — and a longer way yet to gain the confidence of Diablo fans now being told that Diablo Immortal is the franchise’s most successful launch.


Diablo Immortal is available now on PC, iOS, and Android.

Source: Gamerant

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