One of many annoying things about Activision Blizzard (although, to be sure, far from the worst thing) is the way they crow about the sales performance of their products without providing a single meaningful metric that an independent commentator could use to make their own judgment as to how things are actually going.
Diablo II: Resurrected, for example, was touted by Blizzard as having their "Highest-Ever First Week Sales for a Remaster," which really only tells us that it sold better than WarCraft: Reforged, which was infamously terrible. It also presumably sold better than StarCraft: Remastered, although we don't have any clear idea how that remaster sold, either, so it's hard to know how much better.
This bullshit situation basically leaves outsiders (including investors) reading tea leaves to try to figure out how D2R actually performed. And the stakes are high: after Diablo III, which was a sales success but a failure in basically every other way, and after the disastrous announcement of Diablo: Immortal, ActiBlizz desperately need to put a "W" on the board.
In fact, I'd argue they need two of them:
- D2R needed to bring back disaffected Diablo II fans, most of whom have left the Blizzard fold for Path of Exile, Last Epoch, Lost Ark, Grim Dawn, &c; and
- Diablo IV needs to be good enough to keep them in the Blizzard fold, if they do come back.
So, with D2R now available, did ActiBlizz actually succeed at part #1 of this two-part strategy?
Not according to PCGamesN:In today’s Activision Blizzard financial report, the company reported 26 million monthly active users for the Blizzard side of the business across the three months ending on September 30, unchanged from the figure reported for the previous quarter. It seems that in terms of player sentiment, a sexual harassment lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, rising controversy over the direction of World of Warcraft, and the launch of Diablo II: Resurrected essentially balance out.
This basically means that Blizzard attracted a net of zero new or returning users in the last quarter, which means that their highest first week for a remaster claim is essentially hollow. Other gaming media outlets were equally nonplussed: GameRant put D2R on its 10 Most Disappointing Games of 2021 list, alongside such luminaries as Aliens: Fireteam Elite, Battlefield 2042, and Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy: The Definitive Edition (although, to be fair, D2R did manage an 80 metacritic score, which is about 5 points above the MC average).
ActiBlizz's revenue was up 20% year-over-year, but we already knew that Call of Duty: Warzone was doing well; if Blizzard have brought effectively zero old-school D2 fans back for D2R, then I have serious doubts about the sales potential of both D:I and D4. And a sales non-number which comes with multiple qualifiers (i.e. "first week," "for a Remaster") may as well be treated as being, at best, break-even sales performance. This is not the stuff of which franchises are built; or from which you can actually resurrect them.
It doesn't help that D4 is looking like a mishmash of D2 and D3 elements, none of which typically work well together. Rhykker has posted a pretty decent overview of the most recent D4 developer update, and he's definitely more bullish on D4's prospects, but then he's a fan of D3... which I am not, and which many other people are not. D4 looks to have included lots of point-based, end-game grind systems, but it's also clearly scaling all of your skill damage off your main-hand weapon's game values... which are already in the 2500 point range by level 40, which is just too damn high.
So... no, I am not suddenly looking forward to Diablo IV, and I'm still not going to be purchasing it at launch. I sincerely hope that ActiBlizz can pull this one out, and make a D4 game which truly is the next Diablo game that long-time fans of the franchise really wanted D3 to be, but I'm not seeing anything yet which would convince me.
Remember: Never believe the hype, and never, ever preorder.
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