Up until now, the Netflix Diablo anime TV adaptation had been rumor, and semi-confirmed after Andy Cosby responded to my now deleted tweet that he was in negotiations to write the story for the Netflix adaptation.
For two years, this had gone dormant, but several websites are now echoing a really good find in Activision Blizzard Studios president’s Linkedin page that confirms the Netflix Diablo anime TV adaptation as currently in pre-production. No longer a rumor, still not officially announced, but now confirmed as true and in development.
Nick Van Dyk — President (formerly COO/CFO)
Company Name: Activision | Blizzard Studios Dates Employed Sep 2014 – Present Employment Duration 5 yrs 6 mos Location Santa Monica, CA
President of the film and television division of leading game company Activision | Blizzard, charged with adapting the company’s intellectual property to film and TV, including development, financing, production and distribution. After founding the business unit in 2014 and serving as its COO and CFO, I grew the business to $15 mil in revenue and with my creative partner built a diverse and world-class team of 20+ people to execute our mission. I oversee financing, distribution, strategic planning, franchise management, business affairs, operations and other functions of this emerging business unit while working closely with the creative team.
Executive producer of Diablo, a TV adaptation of Blizzard Entertainment’s IP, rendered in anime style. The show is currently in pre-production for distribution worldwide through Netflix.
With my creative partner, developed and sold an animated series based Blizzard’s Overwatch franchise.
In addition, and this is completely new, an Overwatch animated series was sold by Activision Blizzard Studios. However, Netflix isn’t mentioned in this project, which makes you wonder if it is airing on TV or online. Maybe Hulu?
That is not completely ruled out. Nick Van Dyk was formerly the Senior Vice President, Corporate Strategy & Business Development of The Walt Disney Company — which is the parent company of Hulu at the moment.
Not long ago, the Diablo Twitter account responded to a Netflix Tweet — something I found very awkward and suspicious, because Blizzard knows how much hype it would create after the Diablo Netflix rumor circulated the internet. Everything is connected.
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After months of hiatus searching only for engineering experts exclusively, and with Warcraft III: Reforged now Live — The Classic Games section of Blizzard Entertainment’s Careers Page has come back to life.
Blizzard is searching for these positions to be filled:
When Blizzard announces a World of Warcraft, StarCraft, or Diablo game or expansion, sooner or later we will see listings of new novels or books at least 8-12 months before the game/expansion ships.
Now we know that Diablo Immortal is heading to Beta Testing in the middle of 2020 (which can be interpreted to be in June at the earliest).
Blizzard Entertainment is looking for a Community Manager, Global Publishing to grow the Diablo community. With Diablo III now mantained by the Classic Games team, and Nevalistis focused on Diablo IV and probably Diablo Immortal, someone is needed to carry the torch for future Seasons, social media and blog content on that front.
It is official. Activision Blizzard revealed that Diablo Immortal will enter its beta testing phase in the middle of 2020. No specific date was provided, but the exact middle of the year is June. So any date within June, and even July is a fair approximate of when to expect the beta.
This was revealed by Cody Johnson during the Activision Blizzard Q4 2019 financial results conference call held yesterday (Feb 6). You can read the transcript here.
Diablo IV community manager Nevalistis addressed concerns in a Reddit thread about Diablo IV quaterly updates. The next update will be posted before April.
Nevalistis: I mean, we’re 7 days into 2020. For some, the first day back at work from holiday vacation was yesterday. I understand how excited everyone is, but let’s set expectations and cover a few points (some reiterated, some that might be obvious but should be said).
Diablo IV very, very early in development. Part of the reason we’re aiming for quarterly updates is because there’s not a lot right now that’s ready to share. If it was ready to show, you saw it at BlizzCon.
Diablo
IV isn’t the only project we’re working on, though it might be the one
you’re most excited about (and it’s fine if you are). As a reminder, we
have patches actively being developed for Diablo III as well as the
ongoing work on Diablo Immortal. For both bandwidth reasons on our end
as well as avoiding flooding our (currently shared) communication
channels, there’s strategy needed in pacing out the distribution of
information.
Q1 means sometime between now and the end of March.
April would mark the beginning of Q2. I don’t have a time estimate for
you, but my personal goal is to aim for somewhere in the middle to
second third of the quarter. I’m not sure where exactly it’s going to
land; we’ve never approached communication in quite this manner before,
and sometimes there’s changes and schedule adjustments that need to be
made. I suspect there will be many learnings for myself and the team
with the first update as a result. 🙂
We
want to put a lot of time, effort, and polish into these updates
because they are so few and we care a lot about our work. However,
ultimately, the content will be decided by (1) what’s ready to show and
(2) what conversations we’re ready to have with the community. For
example, I wouldn’t expect the first update to be about the intricacies
of end-game activities. It’s still too early (some areas of the game are
still in concepting, while others are being actively implemented) – but
we do want to make sure we’re checking in with you on systems of
interest as they come together, concept art, and possibly in-progress
models. It’s really going to vary. Actually making the game will always
be the priority.
Blogs
take a really long time to produce, especially when they are of this
caliber and content level. If video is required, even more so (as it
adds an entire new team and process for review/approvals). What content
we end up showing will drive the production needs, which is part of why
it’s so hard for me to give you an estimate on arrival.
Making
games is complicated. So is supporting and communicating around them.
Almost none of it can be done fast if we’re going to do it well. We want
to make sure the information we’re giving is as clear and accurate as
possible and, while we want to maintain transparency, we also don’t want
to risk over-promising and under delivering. This happens all too often
by showing features too early.
So we are going to take our time. I understand it’s hard to be patient; I literally live day to day in a building full of cool stuff I can’t share and sometimes it’s maddening. You can bet your hard earned gold we’ll be sharing what we can as soon as possible, and it’s okay to take a break from the waiting if it’s eating at you. We’ll just be here, hard at work.
Within the past 24 hours, Blizzard Entertainment posted a job opening for a Associate Test Analyst for the Diablo Immortal team specifying the role as QA/Test Developer.
After finding the job opening, I used a known technique to find out when a page was first published. In this case: 1 day ago.
