Seems like many forgot that the Blizzard Gear shop used to sell these Diablo night lights (BlizzCon 2012).
So when I saw an image of one of the frames taken from an animation posted on Blizzard’s Twitter feed (below), I knew that people were jumping to conclusions about this being a teaser for a Nintendo Switch port. Blizzard’s marketing has a tendency towards slow reveals that build. The night light did not really match that modus operandi.
I’ve written before about Blizzard’s marketing when it comes to the teaser angle. IMHO, it doesn’t make sense for Blizzard to dump anymore money into Diablo III (more so getting it correct on something like the Switch). That money would be better spent on the future at this time.
March 6th Update: According to Eurogamer (via anonymous sources), that Diablo III is indeed in production for the Switch and that its reveal is several months off.
This particular piece of news still leaves me skeptical. For one; anonymous source. Rarely do you get detailed leaks like this from Blizzard (if anything, it is subtle like when there were rumors about Project Titan).
I can see internally, R&D prototyping a port of the PS4/Xbox One version (since the Switch is ARM based; Tegra SoC) to see how software development can be streamlined across multiple platforms for a future title (like the unannounced Diablo project). But fully producing this now outdated title and selling it on another platform just seems like a final cash grab (maybe pad the numbers a little but I doubt it will sell in the numbers as it did on PS4/Xbox One when Reapers of Soul was fresh on PC as well back in 2014).
But I’ve been wrong before (like initially feeling early on pre-Reaper of Souls that there would be 2 expansions at minimum, only to see that throughout 2015, portions of that 2nd expansion being piecemealed out in the form of new zones and Kanai’s Cube which at the time, I felt were still going to lead into the 2nd expansion; but it was clear at BlizzCon 2015, all of this content was being peeled off from it as the game was more or less heading towards maintenance mode).
