Devil 4
Snowstorm
Immortal Devil? I’ve never heard of it. It’s time to move on to Diablo 4, says Blizzard, which just put the live pre-registration for the beta ahead of today’s Xbox Showcase, which seems likely to be linked.
The website allows you to sign in with your Battlenet ID and sign up for a “chance” to be invited to the upcoming beta, though we don’t have any dates for that yet, and it’s a little surprising that it’s now available as it is recent. releases and reports indicate that Diablo 4 is still a long way off. Sure, games can stay in some sort of alpha or beta for years, but it’s still a little weird to watch.
The process is quite simple. Here are the steps:
- Go to this website.
- Put your birthday.
- Click pre-register and sign in with your Battlenet ID (I needed to confirm with my two-factor Blizzard authenticator).
That’s it, you’re done, and you’re now on the potential list for future beta testing.
Devil 4
Snowstorm
An interesting thing about this new page is the prominent PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X / S mark on the page, which indicates that next-generation consoles may not support this new version, which makes sense if Diablo 4 it’s still a year or two away. That’s also why I think there might be some sort of connection to the Xbox Showcase later today, since Diablo will want to have a big release on consoles and PCs and now has a direct connection to the Xbox itself. This may be just a feature of the showcase, but I guess it could be a bigger revelation, like the confirmation that Diablo 4 will be released in Game Pass.
This may be almost mandatory now, given Microsoft’s pending purchase of Activision Blizzard, and the hypothesis is that while many series remain cross-platform, Microsoft is committed to allowing games with “existing communities” keep cross-platform), we’ll probably be heading for a situation where you have to buy Diablo 4 on PS5, but it will be included in Xbox Game Pass. This, in turn, should also get you a free PC / cloud copy. Again, this all seems very new and weird, especially now that we are back to some of these historical franchises that were once completely independent.
Speaking of historical franchises, the current situation with Diablo Immortal has meant that you need some immediate reassurance that Diablo 4 will not follow a similar path. Okay, no, it’s not mobile (well, it could be via Xbox Cloud Gaming), but after Immortal, you really need to make it clear what the plans are for monetization after launch.
So yeah, I look forward to seeing something related to Diablo 4 on the Xbox showcase today, but sign up now sooner, before the site starts crashing later.
Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to my free weekly content summary newsletter, God Rolls.
Pick up my sci-fi novels, the Herokiller series, and The Earthborn Trilogy.