Both games “will benefit from more development time.”
Blizzard announced today that Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 have been delayed.
Under the unusual circumstances, neither game had an announced release date. Can a game that we don't know when it will be released still be postponed? Yes.
It was speculated that both Diablo 4 and Overwatch were still far away. When asked when OW2019 will come out after it was announced at BlizzCon 2, then game director Jeff Kaplan replied, "I don't know. I have no idea,” he said. Blizzard confirmed in February that Diablo 4 and OW2 will not be released in 2021.
Still, today's announcement clarifies the status of these blockbuster projects. Activision Blizzard said today that with new leadership at the company, "it has become clear that some of the Blizzard content planned for next year will take advantage of more development time to reach its full potential."
“While we still plan to deliver a significant amount of content from Blizzard next year, we are planning a later launch for Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 than originally envisioned,” Activision Blizzard said in its financial presentation. said.
In both games, teams have “made big strides towards completion,” but more development time will provide better long-term support post-launch. Sadly, there's still no sign of a release date for either game, but Activision Blizzard said the change will "harder the financial boost" it expects from them next year, meaning we shouldn't expect to see either of them until sometime. by 2023 at the earliest. Having previously been pushed back from a default 2021 release, fans expected Overwatch 2 to finally arrive in 2022. Meanwhile, the original Overwatch won't be getting any new heroes until the sequel comes out.
Interestingly, while Overwatch 2 has been pushed back, Blizzard also confirmed today that next season of the Overwatch League will run in an early build of the next 5v5 competitive multiplayer mode.