Diablo Immortal he scored in the first month takings for well 49 million dollars: a clear victory for Blizzard, but many are convinced that at the same time it is a defeat for the videogame medium. And they are not all wrong.
We talked about it in the Diablo Immortal review, actually dedicating most of the characters in the article to explaining how we got to this point. In summary: the fault lies with those who did not want to spend even 79 cents to buy mobile games, despite owning a thousand euro phone.
Preferring to lull themselves into the illusion of a free product, the vast majority of smartphone and tablet owners have led to a transformation of the market, which in the space of a few years has literally been invaded by the so-called freemium apps, which can be downloaded for free but equipped with a microtransactions more or less legitimate.
As we explained in the aforementioned review, this monetization system represents the only sustenance for the development teams that launch their free-to-play games on the App Store and Google Play, but the approaches in this sense are the most varied and in general the appearance of the so-called paywall it happens pretty quickly, limiting the experience unless you put your hand to your wallet.
In this sense, the Diablo Immortal experience is atypical: on the one hand, the game allows you to complete the entire campaign, with its approximately thirty hours of duration, without spending absolutely anything; on the other hand, it welcomes us into an endgame where PvP modes find a place in which it is really difficult to be competitive without paying.
Likewise the pleasure of wildest lootingwhich has always represented an important aspect of Diablo’s gameplay, is inhibited by the same practices, which prevent you from maximizing your character if not investing figures that in some extreme situations can become abnormal.
Although the choice is obviously up to users, who can take advantage of what is offered for free and ignore everything else, it is a pity that Blizzard did not want to impose a paradigm shift in free-to-play mobile games, while having the name, resources and skills necessary to do so.
If we want to see the glass half full, these proceeds will multiply the budget that the publisher can use to develop a Diablo 4 truly stratospheric and, as a premium product, devoid of gimmicks of this type: the microtransactions in that case will be limited to cosmetic items and expansions.
What do you say, do we want to talk about it?
Parliamone is a daily opinion column that offers a starting point for discussion around the news of the day, a small editorial written by a member of the editorial team but which is not necessarily representative of the Multiplayer.it editorial line.
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