14 DAY TRIAL // A rather complex marketing display from retail chain Best Buy has indicated that Diablo III, the eagerly awaited action role playing game from developer Blizzard, was set to be launched on the PC on February 1 but the company has moved quickly to squash the information, saying that the game still has not official launch date.
Fans of the game saw the advertising display at a Best Buy store in Rochester, Minnesota, and others have confirmed seeing similar ads in other stores from the chain, which lend the February 1 launch date the same status as an official announcement from Blizzard itself.
The Best Buy website also mentioned the February 1 launch date while another United Kingdom retailers seemed to confirm it by saying that Diablo III would be out in Europe on February 3, using the regular Friday date.
Micah Whipple, who is the community manager for Diablo III, stated, “Diablo III does not have a release date. Any store or person claiming otherwise is guessing.”
Bashiok, another Blizzard community manager, added, “Retailers will not know a date until its officially announced through a press release”, and continued, “We can’t really keep every individual retail shop from making up a date.”
Blizzard has long had a history of announcing official launch dates for its big releases a short time before they actually became available in stores.
All signs point to Diablo III having an early 2012 launch date, after a lot of gamers expected to see it appear in 2011, but with Blizzard there’s always the possibility of a last minute delay to make sure that the development team makes the game the best it can be.
This year the developers is also set to deliver the second chapter in the Starcraft II saga, called Heart of the Swarm, and a new expansion for World of Warcraft, called Mists of Pandaria.