Diablo IV is coming to Xbox Game Pass on March 28, Microsoft announced this week. It'll be the first Activision Blizzard game to land on Xbox's gaming subscription service since Microsoft acquired them in a $68.7 billion deal last October.
In an official Xbox podcast earlier this week, Xbox executives Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond and Matt Booty revealed the company's "vision for the future." The announcement was part PR stagecraft to drum up excitement for Xbox's hardware plans, and part damage control to assuage concerns amid reports that several high-profile Xbox Series X games could come to rival consoles like Nintendo Switch and PS5.
To that end, the company confirmed that four unnamed Xbox exclusives are indeed coming to other platforms — but not Starfield or the new Indiana Jones game in development, as had been previously rumored. A “next-gen” Xbox console is also in the works, along with an “exciting” hardware announcement slated for this holiday season.
Bringing Diablo 4 to Xbox Game Pass is a smart move on Xbox's part. The latest entry in Activision Blizzard's legendary dungeon-crawling action RPG series was one of last year's biggest hits when it launched in June on Blizzard's own Battle.net store before coming to Steam in October. And its seasonal updates continue to pull in hundreds of thousands of players each day. Offering it on Game Pass will open up its player base to the service's 34 million subscribers.
"This is only the start of Xbox players being able to enjoy Activision and Blizzard games on Game Pass — we look forward to sharing more soon," said Xbox Senior Communications Manager Jeff Rubenstein in a company blog post.
In October right after the Activision Blizzard acquisition, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said fans would have to wait until at least 2024 before some of the gamemaker's biggest series like Call of Duty would make their way to Xbox Game Pass. The fact that Diablo IV is already coming to the service so early in the year is a good sign that Call of Duty and more may not be too far behind.
