Even though there has been an incredible amount of blowback to Diablo Immortal, the smartphone entry in the Diablo series that Blizzard announced for iOS and Android devices at BlizzCon last week, Blizzard has already confirmed that it will be developing and pushing more mobile games to the market as part of a broader initiative.
Most of those games, however, will be made in-house, rather than being outsourced to an external developer like NetEase, as was the case with Diablo Immortal. Speaking to Inven Global, Blizzard co-founder and CEO Allen Adham said that Blizzard has a lot of mobile projects in the works, with the company handling most of them itself (although a few will be made in partnership with other developers).
“Many developers in Blizzard created PC and mobile games during the past few years,” Adham said. “Mobile-related games, in particular, are being developed with all IPs. Some are being developed together with others like Diablo Immortal, but most of them are in development solely by Blizzard Entertainment.”
Blizzars has done a mobile game before, and it was actually great—Hearthstone admittedly released for PCs first, but it eventually launched on mobile devices, which have since contributed to the game’s success. It’s not unreasonable to assume that if they were to do a game themselves for smartphones, rather than relying on external companies to outsource to, the final product could end up more appealing than Diablo Immortal evidently has been.