Previously it was thought the game would be launching early this year and recently Blizzard made some changes to the beta to hopefully bring the launch closer. Unfortunately according to an article on Digital Trends, Diablo 3 now has a quarter two release date. Activision was revealing their financial report when the news was broken.

CEO Bobby Kotick suggests the coming year is going to be a good one for the company with Diablo III and a new Call of Duty title coming. The report stated that there will be two releases from Blizzard this year with Kotick promising Diablo III as one of them. It now means the game should be releasing between April 1st and June 30th.

Recently the director of the game, Jay Wilson, said the game will only be remembered if it is a great offering not if it is late. Diablo III community manager Bashiok took to Twitter to answer a number of questions from excited fans of the game. These included that the game will have a four player co-op limit along with the beta graphics would be final.

There was also the news that in-game chat will remain and will be in an upcoming beta patch for users to have a try with. Once the game is finally available it will further boost the company’s popularity, and in the financial report it states that Activision finished as being number 1 in the US for handheld and console publishers for the calendar year.

Activision was further boosted by the Call of Duty franchise with Modern Warfare 3 unsurprisingly became the biggest selling title during the year. Diablo III has been twelve years in the making so far and to some gamers a couple of months delay won’t be too much of a problem, as they will want the game to be the best it can be. But there will be some who are tired of waiting though.

Are you looking forward to Diablo III?

Blizzard Entertainment today announced that they will be holding the 2012 Battle.net World Championships in Asia towards the end of this year, here gamers will battle it out playing StarCraft II and WoW in the World of Warcraft Arena World Championship tournament. It has been revealed that there will be cash prizes to win and Blizzard gamers and eSport fans around the world will be invited, that’s about all we know at the moment.

With the event coming late this year and the releases of Diablo III, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria also scheduled for 2012 it looks like this year is going to be very hectic for Blizzard, we’re sure that gamers won’t mind missing out on BilzzCon 2012 if it means that all of these games / expansions arrive on time.

Apparently more details regarding the 2012 Battle.net World Championship and BlizzCon 2013 will be revealed within the next few months, this should confirm locations and dates etc so stay tuned! Also if you’re worried about the future of BlizzCon you can rest assured knowing that there was no BlizzCon in 2006 and despite this the convention returned in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.

By the time BlizzCon 2013 arrives Heart of the Swarm, Mists of Pandaria and Diablo III should be old news, therefore we might first get a taster of Blizzard’s plans for the next-generation Sony and Microsoft consoles or perhaps StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void – what do you think we will see at BlizzCon 2013?

We would expect such an announcement to be reserved for E3, but the actual source of the news come from none other than Twitter. Micah Whiple, moremore commonly known as Bashiok is Blizzard’s Community Manager, and he said this on Twitter recently in response to a user question asking for the straight answer on whether Diablo 3 would be coming to consoles.

His reply was: ”Yup. Josh Mosqueira is lead designer for the Diablo console project.”

So there we have it in black and white, Diablo III is coming to consoles. We hope by the end of the year too. Obviously the guys at Blizzard are working hard on the PC version of the game as a priority, a game which is scheduled to release in the first half of 2012. Towards the end of last year, a closed beta began for the game and as far as we’re aware remains open for a select number of gamers.

While it is fantastic news that Diablo 3 is headed to consoles, Blizzard has obviously remained silent on which platforms will be included. Will the PS3, Xbox 360 and possibly even the Nintendo Wii U all get a console version of Diablo III? One thing that we hope doesn’t happen is console exclusivity, as most of you will be aware that Blizzard Entertainment are a subsidiary of Activision, and it is fairly obvious which platform they prefer at the moment.

How would you feel if Diablo 3 ended up as an Xbox 360 exclusive? It certainly wouldn’t go down well with PS3 owners who are interested in trying out the popular Diablo franchise. Hopefully we’re not tempting fate, but considering that exclusivity still happens frequently with almost every new game release (FFXIII-2 on Xbox 360 for example), we definitely wouldn’t rule this out from happening.

Battle.net has warned people to beware of phising attempts, so if you get an email asking you to enter your key you should not click any of the links in the email – instead follow the two methods which we mentioned in the first paragraph of this post.

If you haven’t got a code yet don’t worry, Blizzard Entertainment could still be sending out invitations, also the video game developer has pledged to hand out keys via beta promotions and giveaways. We are doing our best to get hold of some codes for a giveaway – however we have not had any luck so far. If you still don’t get beta access don’t worry as the good news is that the beta is not confidential – this undoubtedly means that gaming websites and YouTube will be full to the brim with juicy Diablo 3 information and videos for your pleasure

The best way to get hold of a beta key is probably to ‘Like’ Diablo on Facebook (via this link), as we previously mentioned we are doing our best to get hold of some beta keys to give away to our loyal readers – therefore you should keep checking Product-Reviews.net to see if we get hold of any! One thing to remember is the fact that Diablo 3 requires a constant internet connection.

As and when we hear of any promotions where you can get hold of beta keys we will keep you posted – have you got access to the beta? If so, are you impressed so far?

As noted over on the us.battle.net website, all players need for the free-to-play StarCraft II: Starter Edition is a connection to the Internet and a Battle.net account. Those who sign up for the StarCraft II: Starter Edition will be allowed access to the first four missions of the game’s single-player campaign, including Mar Sara 1-3 and a choice of either Dr. Hansen’s first mission or Tychus’s first mission.

It will also provide them with access to the first two Challenge Missions: Covert Ops and Tactical Command and the terran race in Single-Player vs. AI and Custom Games, as well as access to custom maps such as High Orbit, Shattered Temple, Discord IV and Xel’Naga Caverns. Any achievements or campaign progress they earn while playing the Starter Edition will be automatically saved onto their Battle.net account.

This of course means that if players then choose to upgrade to the full version of the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty game, their achievements and progress will carry over. The custom game and multiplayer maps could be cycled from time to time. In addition, Starter Edition players will also be able to view their profile, ladder and achievements pages.

StarCraft II: Starter Edition players will only be able to play up until the 4th campaign mission, and most of the Challenge Missions will be unavailable. They won’t be able to use versus, co-op matchmaking, chat channels, most custom maps and the party system either. Although there are only 4 maps available at this stage, another will be made available soon.

Will you be signing up for the free-to-play StarCraft II: Starter Edition?

According to Michael McWhertor from kotaku.com, the new ‘Auction House’ service will enable players to buy and sell loot for real money, as well as for virtual gold. Rob Pardo – executive vice president of game design and designer of Diablo II – said that the Auction House will provide players with a safe environment to sell, exchange and search for in-game items.

However, he also pointed out that it is not a Blizzard store that’s designed to sell items directly to players. The Auction House, which is built into the game’s client, will allow players to swap items such as weapons, armor, runestones, gems and even characters, for other items, in-game currency or real-life cash. Transactions between players will be handled anonymously.

The service will enable buyers to search by item type or character class, as well as giving them the option to auto-bid on or instantly buy virtual items. On cash-based transactions, the developer will charge the seller with both a listing fee and a nominal fixed transaction fee if a buyer is found. Blizzard says the listing fee is to prevent users from selling every item they own.

Blizzard does however plan to offer an unspecified number of free listings to players who may want to experiment with selling their virtual goods. Those who opt to sell in-game items for real world cash will have the option of storing the proceeds in one of two accounts: an e-balance that they can use to buy other Blizzard products, or an unannounced 3rd party payment provider.

The third party payment provider will enable players to cash out their earnings, although this option does require them to pay another fee to the third party. Gamers who play in the still unspecified ‘Hardcore’ difficulty will be restricted from using the in-game Auction House service, which according to Pardo is something that Diablo players want in the game.

As for the other revelation, Blizzard said that they implemented the constant Internet connection requirement to improve the overall multiplayer experience and to combat cheating. Do you like the idea of the new in-game Auction House service?

Before you get too excited please not that there has been no hard evidence suggesting this, however a new job position recently showed up on Blizzard’s career pages, here they are looking for a “PlayStation 3 Specialist to be a “key contributor on the Diablo team”. You can see the listing for yourself here, one extract clearly states that they are looking for someone to “Design, implement, and maintain game systems to work on the Playstation 3″.

We wonder whether Blizzard is planning on bringing Diablo III to the PlayStation 3, previously we saw the original Diablo game arrive on the first PlayStation console, therefore it is not completely unforeseen territory.

Currently there has been no official release date announced for any version of Diablo III, hopefully E3 2011 will give us some extra insight on this matter, however we have previously heard that a beta will begin sometime during Q3 2011, therefore a release date depends massively on the success of the beta testing.

Would you buy Diablo III if a PlayStation 3 version was released?

Though the new game is technically just an expansion, you can pretty much call it a new game as it is a whole full length story of its own. The trailer shows off the new chapter, sequel to the chapter that was released last year, Wings of Liberty, and continues where it left off.

It comes just in time for the E3 conference which starts Monday and hints a release could be soon. According to the article at DigitalTrends this chapter, which is the second of an expected three, is expected to delve deeper into the life of Zerg.

No word of a release has been officially mentioned as of yet but you can check out the full article by clicking the link above for more details. In the meantime why not check out the trailer for yourself below.

What do you think of the StarCraft II games so far?

Although the reveal was mostly focused on the single player side of the StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm they did unveil a couple of multiplayer details. For example, according to Raul Valle at pixelatedgeek.com, the developer has no intention of including LAN support.

The multiplayer side will come with new maps and units, but there has been talk that some old units such as the Zerg Overseer may well be removed. It was also revealed that there will be a multiplayer beta at some stage in the future, which will run for around 3-5 months.

As for the single player Zerg campaign, this will contain around 20 missions. Players will be able to evolve their units and upgrade their skills, which Blizzard Entertainment say is to allow gamers to have their own unique swarm that may differ from the swarms of other gamers.

Fans may also like to know that Kerrigan will be a playable character on all maps in the StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm game and although she can be killed, she will respawn after a certain amount of time. You can read more about the upcoming expansion pack via pixelatedgeek.com.

Are you hoping that Blizzard reveals a release date soon?

We have embedded the video at the end of this post, we are led to believe that you can be joined on your quest by one of three companions, these are either a Enchantress, a Scoundrel or a Templar, once you have unlocked them all you will be able to swap them when you choose. Not only this but you will be able to customize the class to satisfy your needs, which should allow you to make your companion suit your style of play.

According to GNews your companion will never die, if they lose their hit points your companion will become incapacitated, this means you will have to battle it out alone for a while and then revive them once you the coast is clear.

The level of follower customization looks pretty in-depth and by the looks of thing Diablo III’s companions will be much more important and useful than Diablo II’s mercenaries ever were.

Check out the video below, do you think customizable followers will be a welcome addition?