14 DAY TRIAL // Diablo III has long been in development at Blizzard and now it seems that the latest installment in the hack and slash series might be playable before the end of the year, even if the developers working on it refused to set a clear launch date or even confirm that the game will be delivered in 2011.
Mike Morhaime, who is the president of Blizzard, has said in an investor conference that, “I am pleased to report that we began internal company-wide testing last week. The game is looking great, and we are currently targeting a Q3 launch for external beta testing.”
The executive has not specified whether he is referring to the calendar third quarter or to the fiscal one, but either way a select number of players will be playing Diablo III before the year is over.
It's not clear how many people will be admitted to the open beta for Diablo III or how much of the game they will have access to.
Morhaime added, “The development team is working hard to try to launch Diablo III this year but I want to be clear that we do not have an official release date or window yet. As always we will not compromise the quality of the game in order to hit a window.”
Blizzard is widely known for delaying titles until they are deemed to be perfect or for canceling titles that do not meet expectations, like Starcraft: Ghost.
It seems that there's some pressure on Blizzard to actually finish the development effort on Diablo III as soon as possible and release it this year, as Thomas Tippl, who is the chief financial officer at Activision, has stated that, if Diablo III is pushed back into 2012, then Blizzard would have to put out two games during that calendar year.