Blizzard’s mobile version of its action-RPG franchise, Diablo Immortal, has made over $300 million in revenue. In comparison, Raid: Shadow Legends, which is one of the most popular and well-known mobile games, made $370 million. This means that Diablo Immortal has been doing exceptionally well, at least in financial terms.
When the game initially came out, it received a lot of criticism and fan backlash; even if the reviews took it well, consumers disagreed. Critically speaking, the game did fine in terms of what it was, which is a mobile version of Diablo. But on the consumer end, fans were furious about the microtransactions and decided to review bomb Diablo Immortal in retaliation.
Blizzard’s president, Mike Ybarra, claimed that the microtransactions were fair since most players don’t actually pay any money at all. This didn’t favor the game’s overall appeal since fans still were against having to use actual money to enjoy the game since the grind wasn’t worth it.
Diablo Immortal Making $300 Million In 5 Months
Even with the backlash, the game seems to be doing extremely well from Blizzard’s perspective. The game made a whopping $49 million in the first month, and only 5 months after coming out; Diablo Immortal has made over $300 million globally in revenue. The total amount consists of $155.6 million from the game’s launch in 60 countries and an astounding $144.7 million from China alone. NetEase handled the Chinese release, and since the company has experience working with big names like Tencent, it worked out well for Diablo Immortal.
What is even more impressive is that the Chinese release of the game took place well over a month after the international release. Even then, the Chinese revenue matched every other county’s revenue combined. China has a total of 4.15 million downloads out of a total of 21.4 million. That makes it almost 19% of the total downloads, so it clearly means that Chinese players have been spending a lot more money on the game than anywhere else.
