While Blizzard announcing new projects in the StarCraft and Diablo franchise may have raised some eyebrows, especially since both titles are quite far off – 2030 and 2029, respectively – the company is confident that it will ship these games. In an interview with Bloomberg ahead of BlizzCon 2026, Blizzard president Johanna Faries spoke about how the company wanted to show its fans that it is confident by making these announcements so early.
“We want to convey confidence in some of our biggest bets coming forward,” she said before going on to note that this is a new Blizzard “that’s going to ship, and ship big, and ship on time, and all hands on deck to set those projects up for success.”
In an interview with GamesRadar, StarCraft shooter project lead Dan Hay and associate director AnaLee Heartling also noted that Blizzard was announcing the game so far in advance to show its confidence in being able to ship it.
“We’ve been working on this thing for a little bit. We’re super proud of it. We feel good about it, and so it’s important that we share,” said Hay. “We think about the community. The community has been waiting for a long time, and we think about them. We think about what they want to say. So, we said to ourselves, ‘Is now the right time to start to show just an inkling of this story?’ And the answer is absolutely.”
“That shows that we’re serious. That shows everyone that that’s a date that we feel really confident about. And what I like about the team, I think we take that number, and we put it on the wall. And somebody goes, ‘So when is this thing going to ship?'”
The StarCraft shooter was unveiled with a cinematic trailer that emphasized the darkness of the sci-fi universe. It featured soldiers from the Terran Dominion faction training to take on the Zerg, with the story itself following a single recruit. As this soldier makes his way up the ranks, he ultimately finds himself facing off against the Zerg Swarm before meeting his demise. The battle is quick and bloody, and all we get to see in the aftermath are several bloody sets of Terran space marine power armors.
Diablo 5 was similarly unveiled during BlizzCon 2026 with a cinematic trailer that revealed details like the story taking place after the eponymous Lord of Terror has successfully won and taken over Sanctuary. Players will be part of a traveling caravan as they go to different places to cleanse the world of demonic corruption.
Interestingly, Blizzard has also confirmed that no further expansions for Diablo 4 are planned for now, with the teams being busy working on seasonal content for the action RPG alongside working on the development of Diablo 5 itself.
“We’re all focused on [Diablo 4] seasons and getting to Diablo 5. We feel like we told the Story of Hatred. We had a great conclusion with Lord of Hatred with what we have with Mephisto, and we are moving towards telling the Story of Terror.”
