Fast forwarding to the Diablo part (4 minute mark), I’m still surprised that even gaming journalists were still holding out hopes for some type of “one last thing” gotcha for Diablo III even though Blizzard put a lid on that back late September.
As I’ve mentioned many times since BlizzCon 2015 (when it became clear the bits of pieces of content they were releasing was the parts of an aborted expansion), the thus far unmentioned/underwraps executive decision was made to focus on the future. It would not surprise me that several years from now, the company will offer a candid post-mortem about this (similar to how they finally talked about their canceling Project Titan and how assets from that was utilized for what ended up becoming Overwatch).
The team they have hired for that “unannounced Diablo project” has their work cut out for them now in terms of coming up with conceptual designs and story because they cannot afford to go another year without anything major to talk about for the franchise. Without solid concepts in place, production work will be blocked for the cinematics team who require a huge lead time to put out quality work (it took them almost an year to do the cinematic trailer for Legacy of the Void).
I therefore do expect the 2nd half of 2018 to be the starting point of the Blizzard’s marketing teaser style hype for the next title in the Diablo franchise leading into BlizzCon 2018 (which itself is probably only going to be the starting point leading up to an eventual launch in the future). I’ve already blocked out early November 2018 just in case in order to attend/meet up.
