Torchlight 3 out before Diablo 3, Runic CEO hypothesizes

Well the man is one of the founders of the company that would become Blizzard North.

@gameburke

Same...

I'm also betting cold-fusion, space colonization, and Quarian discovery will be finished before Diablo III.

@ShadowXIII

You might be confusing Diablo 3 with Duke Nukem Forever

@Iamdude

No, Duke Nukem Forever will be out before Diablo 3 as well.

@Frivolous

Torchlight 1 has sold 725k copies, and isn't even on consoles yet... so yeah no. Blizz games (excluding WoW) are far more nitch than their fanbase wants to believe (and FAR more expensive than the torchlight games), as seen by the amazing plunge in SC2 sales after the first week in the US and UK. Sure they will pick up some fans from WoW, but being very expensive PC only, non-mmorpg games still still limits their sales.

@Dug

I don't see how you can consider one of the most mainstream game developer niche. All of Blizzard's main franchises had hit platinum within the first few days or weeks of sale. D2 had sold 4 millions copies whilst being far more expensive than torchlight.

@Dug Diablo II sold 1 million copies in two weeks, with total sales figures at over 4 million.

Starcraft also did 11 million or so, which is so far beyond niche I'm not sure we're even using the same language any more.

@woooooooot

How are they mainstream? RTS's and dungeon crawlers are far from mainstream. And D2 has been out what, 10 years? And WoW, its popular sure, albeit in the Western world far less than say MW2 or Halo (70% of their subscribers are in Asia now). As goliath as Blizzard is, they pale to say, Rock Band and most of the console giants sales-wise. However, they do get to milk their customers for $15 a month.

@JasonBaur

Remove Korea, the e-sports thing and multiple account users the SC, and the sales are good, but hardly great. Consoles games hit 30-40 million in sales in a few years in some cases, so 10 million is 10 years is good, but not earth-shattering. And I said RTS's are niche, so show me any RTS (outside of SC) with sales numbers approaching some of the big FPS's or Wii games. Just because your world revolves around Blizzard does not make universal.

@Dug

lol wat?

@Frivolous

Diablo's dev team is twice the size of Runic, so figure it's costing Blizzard AT LEAST twice as much in staffing alone. Blizzard has also been incurring development costs for the life of the project with no real source of revenue.

So if Runic puts out a Torchlight every 1.5 years, sells at least 725K copies per version, and avoids the added development and miscellaneous costs that go along with being a big studio... does it matter if Diablo 3 ships more copies?

@Dug

"Blizz games (excluding WoW) are far more nitch than their fanbase wants to believe (and FAR more expensive than the torchlight games), as seen by the amazing plunge in SC2 sales after the first week in the US and UK."

Lol @ You, thinking that a plunge in sales after the first week means anything but the fact that people usually go buy games as soon as they're available rather than wait for no reason at all.

@Dug

@Dug

So if we're ignoring everything but the US, how many games have even sold anywhere close to what some blizzard games have in the US? Outside of Call of Duty and Halo, they're pretty much some of the best selling games around.

And pretty much no game has ever sold 30-40 million sales without being a console pack-in. I think the best selling non-pack in, is still Super Mario Bros 3 at around ~15 million+ world wide.

And you're actually misinformed about WoW's subscription numbers, it's more like 70% of the subscriptions are in the west after the fiasco between The9/the chinese government/Blizzard

Sure they're not as mainstream as games like Call of Duty, but they still sell extremely well. Try looking at the NPDs sometime, and you'll see how well blizzard games sell. Hell I bet you right now, Starcraft II and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will be the best selling titles this year outside of Halo: Reach and CoD:BLOPS. Watch the NPDs.

Despite being in somewhat niche genres (I wouldn't call Diablo particularly niche, it's incredibly simplistic and easy at the surface) and on a platform that (lol) is supposedly dead for gaming, Blizzard games are bestsellers. They're incredibly polished, well made, and most of all, accessible. Are they going to be the best selling games of all time? Probably not. Do they still sell more than most developers can dream of? Yes. Sure maybe they're not Nintendo or Activision or Bungie, but they may be a "Square-Enix" which is still impressive as hell sales, and relatively mainstream.

@Dug

Wow what the **** are you talking about? You speak like console games all spout out tens of millions of games in a lifetime. They don't, only a very select few do. Most games released by major publishers will peak out in the early millions. 1, 2, 3 million generally. If it's an extremely high profile release like Halo, Grand Theft Auto, or Call of Duty, then yes, it will reach the tens of millions, but this generation it most likely won't reach 30-40 million.

@Dug You don't get to arbitrarily decide what sales "count" to fit your argument. Starcraft sold over 11 million. Furthermore, no console game that is not bundled with the console has ever broken 30 million, let alone more. 11 million SC sales is on par with some games in the Pokemon series (which benefits from people buying both paired games), which is about as mainstream as it gets.

Additionally, you seem to have changed your argument from "Blizzard games are niche" to "certain genres are niche". Blatant goalpost shifting. But futile. SC has outsold Half-Life 2 and Halo 3, the best-selling FPS on PC and XBox, respectively. And the Command & Conquer and Age of Empire franchises have pushed serious units. RTS is pretty bedrock PC gaming (not the case on consoles, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone here).

@Dug

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games

So, SOME pack in games could push 30million....which is questionable inclusion on the list since no one CHOSE to buy them....but what was that about 30-40 million again?

Sorry to burst your bubble, Blizzard wouldn't be the giant they are if they sold only to a "small niche" market. Basically, please perform a cranial rectal inversion before posting again.

Also, could you back up your statement about %70 of WoW's subscribers being in Asia with some kind of fact and source, if you know what those are? With Blizzard being very tight lipped about their subscriber information, I'd love to know where you found this information other than in your ass.

@Deschain

Torchlight 3 will be sometime in 2012, so.. its possible Diablo 3 could be delayed some

@Faenix

Yeah, but it's possible for any game to get delayed. What makes you think Diablo 3 will? The game is pretty far along, and after this Blizzcon in a couple months we should know a lot more about the game. I simply think that if things go the way Blizzard wants they will release the game in 2011.

@Deschain

What makes us think Diablo 3 will get delayed....other than the annual delays?

@ThePenIsMightier

Diablo 3 has never had a release date, so it can't get delayed. Besides that I already said why I don't think it will get delayed. You're not being witty by copying my reply format. Which btw did not make sense in the way you asked the question.

@Dug Nintendo, Valve, and Bungie say hi.

@Berzerk

Tell sloan i said hey back

@Dug

Acitivision does that every year with sports.

@Berzerk

I'll give you Nintendo, but Valve? Seriously? And for sports games, well that's just specific to those franchises (kinda like Rock Band), where the content is purely modular, just plug in new rosters/songs and good to go

@Dug

Well, that's arguably all HL Episodes 1 and 2 were.

*HL2

Blizzard just said Cataclysm is on track for release this year.

http://www.wow.com/2010/08/06/world-of-warcraft-cataclysm-still-on-track-for-a-2010-release-d/

@Berzerk I'm pretty sure they said they wanted one non-WoW expansion a year. The wow dev team is mostly seperate.

That would mean -
SC2 - 2010
D3 - 2011
SC2: Zerg - 2012
SC2: Protoss - 2013

@Berzerk

Work on HotS has not even started. It's kinda annoying when people try to form a hypothesis without considering multiple sources of information.

@Deschain

Well, at one point Blizzard estimated 18 months between WoL and HotS; which would put it at the end of 2012.

@Vidikron

End of 2012 is more reasonable than I originally gave credit. It's really the fact that he thinks it will be finished before D3 that has me going "wat".

@Haelie

This FISCAL year they said.

The fiscal year does not end on December 31, 2010. If they put it out January 31, 2011, it still counts as this year.

@Haywire; Like what? More first person shooters and rhythm games?

@Haywire

We do not need to flood the market with more mainstream high fantasy RPG's, "realistically" cheesy military FPS games, or crazy awesometastic rhythmic masturbation games.

Sure, but Runic managed to find a gap in the market with Torchlight and have done well from it. It just seems disappointing that they don't even want to try to find another. I am not talking about them adding another game to an already-saturated genre like FPS, but perhaps a strategy or puzzle game.

@xXHexagonXx

Where did you hear this? I hadn't heard this news.

@Bubbameister33 LOL awesome name.

I found it on the internets of course, they hope to have it on XBLA and PSN by the holidays. Which if true I will buy it again on XBLA.

@xXHexagonXx

Sweet, I hope this is true. Thanks for the info.