Diablo 4 made over 1 billion dollars so far, and $150 million of that from those exorbitantly priced skins
We've always known that Diablo 4 is one of Blizzard's most successful games, but now we have some figures to attach to those titles.
Diablo 4 has brought in a lot of money. This isn’t in itself surprising, of course, the game made $666 million in sales at its launch last year, setting a new record for Blizzard. But. has that momentum continued over 15 months later?
According to someone who's in a position to know, the answer is a resounding yes!
As spotted by Games Pressure, senior product manager Harrison Froeschke revealed on their (since deleted) LinkedIn profile that Diablo 4 has made over $1 billion in revenue since its release. The figure covers all the money generated by the game, be they sales, battle pass purchases, microtransactions and so on.
On microtransactions specifically, however, that haul amounted to more than $150 million. The number, according to Froeschke’s since-deleted post, accounts mainly for all things virtual currency - including store bundles, general discounts, pricing and even personalised discounts.
It’s hard to weigh how high that microtransactions revenue is based on this number alone. Publishers rarely break down revenue by sources, but $150 million is still a massive chunk of money, representing 15% of the $1 billion overall revenue Diablo 4 brought in.
Diablo 4’s microtransactions have long ben criticised by players for just how expensive they are. Considering the overhead perspective of the gameplay camera, the perceived value of these cosmetics diminish considerably when you compare them to something like Fortnite skins. And yet, their prices are about the same, if not more expensive.
Blizzard also caught flack for selling bundles of simple colour swa[s and other minor effects for a lot of money. That is all particularly frustrating considering the game does not award players any of the paid currency through play. Even the battle pass, when purchased and fully completed, doesn’t offer enough Platinum to buy the next one, or really anything in the in-game store.
Given all that success, it’s fair say the experiment of turning Diablo 4 into Call of Duty has worked out well for Activision Blizzard, so you should only expect the microtransactions train to continue.