Blizzard Entertainment has said in the past that releasing Overwatch on the Nintendo Switch would be a huge challenge, and there’s little chance of something like World of Warcraft or Heroes of the Storm hitting the hybrid console. Diablo III is another story, however, and now we’ve officially learned that the game is coming to Switch sooner than we expected.
A now-deleted Forbes article let the news slip ahead of an official announcement. It revealed that the Switch version will launch in 2018 and pack in the Reaper of Souls and Rise of the Necromancer expansions, similar to other versions of the game currently available at retail. The game will support four-player cooperative play in several ways — on one Switch console, with four different Switch consoles locally, or online via Nintendo Switch Online. It will also include special Zelda-themed cosmetic items for portrait frames, pets, wings, and armor, similar to what Skyrim did when it launched on the console.
The game will support multiple control schemes, including the Joy-Con and the Pro Controller. It will also support the same themed seasons just announced for the PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One versions.
Just last week, Blizzard released a video titled “The Future of Diablo,” where the company teased the projects it has in the works. During the video, the studio said it is actually working on more than one Diablo project, though it did not elaborate on what that meant, and said more information would be coming this year. If Diablo 4 is in development, we could still hear about it before the end of the year, but Blizzard remains tight-lipped on the project for now.
Blizzard just released the latest expansion for World of Warcraft, Battle for Azeroth, which sees the game’s world thrown into chaos as all-out war breaks out between the Horde and the Alliance. The expansion adds multiple playable areas, “allied races,” 20-player cooperative Warfronts, a new level cap, and a ton of new story-based quests for players to complete.
If you can’t wait to play Diablo III on Switch, the game is available now on PC, Mac, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, and PlayStation 3.
Updated August 16, 2018: Updated with Blizzard’s official confirmation that Diablo III will come to the Nintendo Switch this year.
