BlizzCon 2026 is well underway, but some of the show’s biggest announcements aren’t due to come out for years. StarCraft’s debut trailer ended with a 2030 release window attached. Diablo 5’s reveal similarly included a 2029 promise – a strange move for a publisher as big as Blizzard Entertainment.
Big game announcements nowadays don’t specify a release year unless the project is close to the finish line, usually, since game production can be complicated and unpredictable. Promising fans a release year this far ahead sounds like a recipe for possible disappointment, especially for Blizzard, a company that sometimes takes more than a decade between mainline entries in its biggest franchises. Any number of problems might pop up between now and 2030, after all. So, what’s different this time?
Bloomberg spoke to Blizzard Entertainment president Johanna Faries ahead of this weekend’s convention and she seemed quite positive about StarCraft and Diablo 5’s faraway launches. “We want to convey confidence in some of our biggest bets coming forward,” Faries told the outlet.
Possibly shooting down fears that StarCraft and Diablo 5 might miss their dates, Faries continued: “We’re a Blizzard that’s going to ship, and ship big, and ship on time, and all hands on deck to set those projects up for success.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by StarCraft project lead Dan Hay, who told GamesRadar+ that 2030 is “a date we feel really confident about.” He also confirmed the StarCraft team has been “working on this for a little bit” and “feel good about it, and so it’s important that we share.”
The topic of Microsoft and Xbox’s sweeping job cuts also came up in the Bloomberg interview, and while Faries didn’t comment on how those layoffs might Blizzard, she did say that preserving the storied company’s culture “has been my ultimate focus” in recent times. “The unique special sauce that is Blizzard both culturally and creatively. And to the extent that we can perform well for Microsoft, I think that should be seen as a mutual win,” she added. Blizzard recently became Xbox’s best-performing studio, so things seem to be going well. At least, from an outside perspective.