The Chinese National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) approved Call of Duty: Mobile in August 6 to be played in China. This happened barely two days after the Activision Blizzard Q2 2020 Investors Conference.
Call of Duty: Mobile surpassed 250 million downloads worldwide. This approval will see a substantial growth beyond that.
Right after the Activision Blizzard Q2 2020 Investors Conference, lead designer Wyatt Cheng surprised everyone with a Diablo Immortal update at the official website with the following message.
The Activision Blizzard ATVI Q2 2020 event was held in August 4 at 1:30pm US Pacific Time. During the event, they announced that Diablo Immortal Alpha (internal test) is slated to start in the coming weeks.
It is confirmed that “internal test” refers to company-wide employee only testing. Up to this point, the game had been tested internally by the Diablo Team. It will open up to the entire Blizzard company: WoW team, Overwatch team, Classic Games team, and other umbrella teams: Texas, Ireland, Taiwan, China, Paris, etc.
Once that internal playtest ends, there will be steps for a Regional Test. Now, according to MrMesli, this means there won’t be a random pick of players. If the Regional Test started in India, and/or Brasil — everyone in those regions can participate.
A BlizzCon online stream is expected early 2021. BlizzCon 2020 was postponed due to COVID-19.
The Diablo Immortal China website has been updated with new Class animations and models.
Google Play and the App Store do not share to the public how many players have pre-registered to play Diablo Immortal; but there are other platforms out there that do share the data.
It is this way how we can more or less gauge how popular the mobile game is to fans in certain areas of the globe.
Google Play isn’t pre-installed in most Android devices in Asia.
I was about to write an article about how many mobile users have pre-registered to play Diablo Immortal in Asian markets when I got a surprise sighting that turned the article title around.
I browsed down the page to the comments and found out that the Tap Tap Diablo Immortal account moderator had been very active responding to comments in the past 16 hours and before that.
Vice-president and Executive Producer of the Diablo Franchise Rod Fergusson is scheduled to talk at the Game Developers Conference (GDC 2020).
This will happen days after the ChinaJoy and ATVI Q2 2020 events. If you are a GDC attendee ask him about Diablo IV and Diablo Immortal.
Two Activision Conference Calls ago we have heard of a Diablo Immortal regional test on track for mid-2020.
PezRadar answered a question in his Twitter account, confirming Alpha testing. He won’t say when, but mid-2020 window is closing fast.
The system requirements for Diablo Immortal are yet unknown at the time of this posting, but it is a good idea to take a look at the system requirements of current Activision Blizzard mobile games as kind of a reference.
When I launched my iPad Pro (2018), I searched for a widely known mobile game in the Activision Blizzard portfolio:
Blizzard Entertainment is currently searching to fill two job openings that are critical for the launch of Diablo Immortal (thanks, MrMesli):