As players, we are used to Blizzard Entertainment launching Alpha and Beta testing for PC only, and when the game goes live, there is a PC/Mac launch.

On day one (Nov 2, 2018) Blizzard Entertainment made available pre-registrations for a chance to be invited to test Diablo Immortal Beta. The official website says:

“Pre-register on Google Play today. Coming soon to the App Store for iPhone.”

However, the App Store button is grayed out. So the common sense to think here is that after the last couple of Activision Blizzard financial conference calls revealed plans for Regional Testing of Diablo Immortal by Mid 2020 — that it would be for Android.

Just a few days ago, Julien Blary (@Nari_Ju) — the guy who claimed to have sources telling him about Diablo II: Resurrected at Actugaming.net tweeted an update on June 29th… something intriguing about Diablo Immortal.

Lousyly translated essence: Regional Beta starts towards the end of June on iOS first.

This has been itching at me for several hours. How can Diablo Immortal come to iOS first instead of Android?

In 2018, those who played Diablo Immortal at BlizzCon played it with an Android device. Rhykker responded my question a few hours ago. The device he played in was a Samsung Galaxy Note 9 (which originally shipped with Android 8.1 Oreo).

So the question I wanted to get an answer for is … what device did Blizzard allowed players to play Diablo Immortal in at BlizzCon 2019?

I went back to my BlizzCon 2019 coverage post (page 4) where I embeded or linked a few hands-on videos. One was from a Turkish player: PintiPanda. The other one from a Korean player: Looksam.

I noticed the Korean player was playing on a Tablet, and he showed it to the camera briefly. The front of the tablet.

I patiently watched the Turkish player’s videos in his channel, and one of them showed him presenting the tablet’s back in front of the camera. It was an iPad.

That means that as of BlizzCon 2019, Blizzard had a playable iOS demo of Diablo Immortal. You can see the back of the iPad at the bottom-left corner of this image from his livestream. He showed it at the very beginning of the video — around 00:10 seconds into it.

In case you think: “well, he showed his own iPad, not the device where he played the Diablo Immortal demo.” Then, I will show you evidence. Check the same video at 00:01:21 where he shows Diablo Immortal on the front of the tablet, then as he turns it around you can see the Apple logo in the back.

I don’t know if what the Actugaming writer said is true — that the Regional Test is coming to iOS first. But here is solid evidence that a fully playable Diablo Immortal iOS demo was at BlizzCon 2019 (7 months ago).

I was really not expecting this. Either way, I have an iPad Pro and a Samsung Galaxy S10. Whichever platform this Regional Testing launches in I hope to share gameplay video with you as soon as Blizzard invites me. Follow @blizzplanetcom and subscribe to the YouTube channel for updates. Hopefully, soon.

Diablo Immortal on iOS is a big deal after Apple announced last week that the upcoming Apple Mac computers this Fall 2020 will come with an Apple (ARM) chip. This will allow iOS apps to be played in these new Mac computers as a native app. That means those who buy the upcoming Mac ARM computers can play Diablo Immortal there too.

From the Apple website’s Newsroom:

World-Class Developer Tools

Apple’s developer community of more than 20 million use the Mac to create amazing experiences for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. Xcode 12 makes developing great apps for macOS easier than ever. SwiftUI gets a major upgrade so that developers can write entire apps with shared code across all Apple platforms, while easily adding custom Mac features like Preferences windows. And SwiftUI is used in even more places, powering the new widgets for Mac, iPhone, and iPad using shared Swift code.

Mac Catalyst, which debuted with macOS Catalina last year, has made it easy for developers to bring their iPad apps to the Mac. And in macOS Big Sur, Mac Catalyst apps automatically inherit the new look, while giving developers powerful new APIs and total control over the look and behavior of their apps.

Thanks, Ivenend for bringing the tweet to my attention.

Update (July 5): Watch Rhykker’s latest video discussing Diablo Immortal on iOS and Diablo II: Remastered.

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BlizzCon 2019 Panel Transcripts