Thursday, March 28

‘Diablo 4’ Beta Registration Has Quietly Gone Live Ahead Of The Xbox Showcase


Devil Immortal? Never heard of it. Time to move on to Diablo 4, says Blizzard, which has just put pre-registration live for the beta ahead of today’s Xbox Showcase, which seems likely to be linked.

The webpage allows you to log in with your Battlenet ID and sign up for a “chance” to be invited to the future beta, though we do not yet have any dates for that, and it’s a little surprising this is live now, as recent departures and reports indicate that Diablo 4 is still a pretty long ways off. Granted, games can stay in some form of alpha or beta for years now, but it’s still a bit odd to see.

The process is pretty simple. Here are the steps:

  • Go to this webpage.
  • Put in your birthday.
  • Hit pre-register and login with your Battlenet ID (I needed to confirm with my Blizzard two-factor authenticator).

That’s it, you’re done, and will now be on the potential list for future beta tests.

One interesting thing about this new page is the prominent branding of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on the page, which indicates that last-gen consoles may not be supported for this new version, which does make sense if Diablo 4 is still a year or two away. It’s also why I think there could be some sort of connection to the Xbox Showcase later today, given that Diablo is going to want to have a big launch on consoles as well as PC and now has a direct connection to Xbox itself. This may just be a feature in the showcase, but I suppose it could be a larger reveal, like confirmation that Diablo 4 will launch on Game Pass.

That almost may be mandatory now, given Microsoft’s pending purchase of Activision Blizzard, and the assumption is that even if many series stay multiplatform (and Microsoft has committed to allowing games with “existing communities” to stay multiplatform), that we will probably headed toward a situation where you’ll have to buy Diablo 4 on PS5, but it will be included in Xbox Game Pass. Which then in turn should also get you a free PC/cloud copy. Again, all of this feels very new and weird, especially now that we’re returning to some of these storied franchises that have previously been wholly independent.

Speaking of storied franchises, the current situation with Diablo Immortal has caused me to be in need of some immediate reassurance that Diablo 4 is not going to go down a similar path. Granted no, it’s not mobile (well, it kind of could be through Xbox Cloud Gaming), but after Immortal it really, really needs to be made clear what the plans are for post-launch monetization.

So yes, I am expecting to see something related to Diablo 4 in the Xbox showcase today, but sign up now ahead of that, before the site may start crashing later on.

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