Recently Blizzard hinted that Diablo III would not be releasing in 2010 alongside StarCraft II and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm and that it would be coming in the "next few years." Speaking with Techland, Blizzard's VP of game design, Rob Pardo, confirmed that Diablo III will not be coming next year. "I think it’s safe to say that, yeah, [Diablo III] is not going to be out next year," he said. "We always announce all of our games too early. We realize that and go, 'You know what? Next time we’re not going to do that.' And then we always fail at that. But I'd rather fail at that than fail at making the game great."
When asked if the long wait for Diablo III was due to other priorities, notably Starcraft II and the Cataclysm expansion, he said that that wasn't the issue. "Each game has individual development teams; it's just that the way that we develop games, we develop them very iteratively," he explained. "We just have a different process and approach than a lot of other studios, and it makes it a very difficult process for us to predict street dates when we're multiple years out."
"We’ve been wrong [on release dates] for as long as I can remember," commented Pardo. "So that's why we don't do release dates anymore."
I'm not sure if the "next few years" means 2011, 2012, or for that matter, 2013, but we sure as hell won't be seeing this game next year. Unfortunate news for Blizz fans.
