The first Activision Blizzard game to come to Game Pass will be Diablo 4, Microsoft announced today as part of its Xbox business update podcast. The action RPG will be available for anyone who is subscribed to the service starting on March 28.
When Microsoft bought ZeniMax in 2021, it dropped 13 Bethesda games on Game Pass all at once, including Fallout 4 and Wolfenstein: The New Order. So far, Diablo 4 is the only Activision Blizzard game announced for Game Pass following the $68.7 billion acquisition last October, but Microsoft says “both new releases and classic games” will eventually make their way there, too.
Game Pass players will gain access to Diablo 4 about a month before its latest season, the Season of the Construct, ends on April 16. That’s plenty of time to pick up your robot spider pet and start blasting the new vault dungeons. Blizzard will hopefully have released The Gauntlet, a fixed weekly dungeon with leaderboards to chase after for endgame players, by then as well.
It won’t be long until nobody remembers the days Blizzard games were shackled to its Battle.net launcher. Overwatch 2 was the first game to arrive on Steam last year and Diablo 4 followed soon after. And now with many Blizzard games supporting crossplay between PC and console, there are fewer and fewer reasons to use Battle.net as a newcomer.
Diablo 4 players have its first annual expansion, Vessel of Hatred, to look forward to this year. Blizzard plans to reveal details on the new chapter in the story, new jungle location, and new class in the summer, but leaks have given us some details already.
www.pcgamer.com