Blizzard wants Diablo to move faster, but what does that really mean?
Diablo does not need a new game every few years, it just needs to stop taking 10 years.
This one might make you feel old, especially if you have been playing Diablo for 30 years. Diablo fans have become pretty accustomed to waiting with this franchise.
In 2000, we got Diablo 2, followed by Diablo 3 in 2012, and Diablo 4 launched only in 2023. That is three big games released over more than two decades. Now, Microsoft/Xbox insider Jez Corden shared that Blizzard wants the waiting time between "tentpole Diablo launches" to be shorter, but even if it is probably too early for a Diablo 5 game, this means that anything could happen next. Of course, this should not be read as evidence that the next game is suddenly going to be announced at BlizzCon. We might just get information about the current games.
But the idea itself is worth thinking about.
Diablo Does Not Need to Become Call of Duty
As always, the first reaction to this online was people panicking that Blizzard is suddenly going to start releasing Diablo games every couple of years. That does not really make sense since a game like Diablo 4 takes years to build. The second expansion, Lord of Hatred, only launched in April 2026, with a new story, classes, systems, and other changes to the game. And even if you take Diablo 2R or Diablo 3, these games still get updated with content, and D2R even got a new class a few months ago!
There is also a big difference between wanting to not wait 10+ years, and wanting to release a new game every year. Just shortening the gap would already be a pretty significant change.
Five or Seven Years Would Be Enough
Look at the gaps between the main games.
Diablo 2 came four years after the original, and then came the huge 12-year gap before Diablo 3, and another 11 years before Diablo 4.
If Blizzard could bring that down to something closer to five or seven years, Diablo 5 would not need to arrive tomorrow for the franchise to feel more alive. It would still give Blizzard plenty of time to make a good new game, and at the same time, players are not spending most of a generation wondering if the next Diablo is even happening.
And there is another reason this could be important.
More Diablo Does Not Have to Mean More Sequels
Blizzard has already shown that the Diablo name can support more than one kind of content.
Diablo Immortal took the franchise into a different kind of game, and as mentioned already, Diablo II: Resurrected has continued to exist alongside the newer games. Blizzard has even been willing to add substantial new content to its older games, instead of treating every previous Diablo as something that needs to be abandoned.
That opens up a much more interesting possibility:
Maybe Blizzard does not need to release Diablo 5, Diablo 6, and Diablo 7 at a faster pace
Maybe they simply want the Diablo franchise to have more things happening inside it
A new main game could eventually be followed by an expansion, a spin-off, another project built around a different style of gameplay, or even more support for one of the older games. The exact format matters less than keeping the franchise from disappearing for a decade at a time.
And players have a ton of original, and... crazy ideas of what could be done:
Diablo Souls-like
Diablo CRPG
Diablo Skyrim-like
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, but in the world of Diablo
Diablo Racing game (yes, I said the ideas were crazy, do not blame me!)
Diablo fighting game (let's be honest, this could be really fun)
Diablo RTS
Diablo JRPG
And these are just a few ideas we found, but it proves that there could be a ton of alternatives.
For now, this does not tell us what is coming, or even what form the next Diablo project will take, but maybe BlizzCon will reveal that over the weekend!