Blizzard’s upcoming mobile game Diablo Immortal is scheduled to begin an Alpha test later this year.
This is according to Activision Blizzard’s recent earnings call from back on February 6. During the call, the company talked at length about a range of different topics relating to everything Call of Duty and Call of Duty Mobile, to Blizzard’s IPs like World of Warcraft.
Diablo Immortal was also briefly touched on and it included information about player testing. The company says that they expect to begin testing the game externally with players around the middle of the year.
The Diablo Immortal Alpha test will be regional
Other than the details about Blizzard’s time window for testing, there wasn’t much else the company had to share about the game in terms of specifics.
It did however note that the planned tests for Diablo Immortal will be regional. The company doesn’t state which regions will have access to participate in the tests. But it will likely share more information on that once it gets closer to the time the tests are planned to go live.
This also could mean that some players in certain regions won’t have access. Or, Blizzard could plan to include all regions where its games are available, and simply open tests region by region.
Diablo Immortal may not launch in 2020
Activision Blizzard noted in the call that there’s no material revenue for Diablo Immortal in the company’s 2020 guidance.
This is vague to be sure, but it might suggest that Diablo Immortal may not actually launch this year. This hasn’t been confirmed, but with no predicted revenue for the game being put into the company’s 2020 projections it would make sense if the game wasn’t released this year.
If Blizzard did plan to launch Diablo Immortal in 2020, it would certainly make at least some revenue from it. As an example Call of Duty Mobile launched in October of last year. And, it still made a ton of revenue for the company in 2019. Even for having only been out for three months before the year ended.
That said, having no yearly predicted revenue for the game may not mean that Blizzard has no plans to release the game this year.
What is certain is that Blizzard looks to have plenty of work left to do on the game. The last time company mentioned anything about prior to the earnings call last week was back after Blizzcon 2019.
The company didn’t talk about the game at the convention, but it did have a new demo there for attendees to test out. And it later put out a blog post with updated information about the game’s development.