Blizzard Says Diablo 5 Was Too Big To Be A Diablo 4 Expansion

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Diablo 4 is far from dead, but don’t expect any new expansions for the game going forward. Instead, Blizzard is preparing to tell the darkest story yet in Diablo 5, one that required a new numbered game to properly reintroduce Diablo himself back to the series, following his defeat in 2012’s Diablo 3. Currently aiming for a 2029 release, this would mean that players are in for a relatively short wait for a new Diablo game–compared to previous releases–as Diablo 5 will arrive a mere six years after Diablo 4.

Speaking to GameSpot at BlizzCon, Diablo senior production director Tiffany Wat and executive producer Matt Zitterman explained that it made sense for Blizzard to move to a new Diablo so that the studio could make structural changes to the game–changes that would have been very challenging to pull off within the framework of a Diablo 4 expansion.

“It really started by looking at who our players are,” Zitterman said. “Who are Diablo players? Why are they playing Diablo? What do they want out of a Diablo game? That is a really critical step in the early conceptual phase for a game, even before you’re thinking about, like, ‘Gosh, should we