Diablo 3 Launching Between April and June, SWTOR Seemingly Fails to Wound WoW

Diablo III is nearly here, and I'm pretty sure Blizzard actually means it this time. During Activision Blizzard's Q4 2011 financial call, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said that the latest entry in the Lord of loot pinatas (and, you know, destruction) is expected to launch during the company's Q2 2012. That'd place it somewhere between March April and June. So if you want to cool off during the hot summer months, you can just go to hell. Wait, that came out wrong. At any rate, there's more Acti-Blizz news after the break.

During the same conference call, Blizzard announced that WoW's shed a few more subscribers -- 100,000, to be specific. And while most MMOs would be entering full lockdown and mashing the giant red "In case of emergency, go free-to-play" button, WoW's still wowing a crowd of 10.2 million. I think, by the grace of god, it's going to be OK.

That said, this does seem to suggest that Star Wars: The Old Republic hasn't exactly been the Death Star to WoW's Alderaan. Then again, plenty of people are still riding their first free month of SWTOR, so I imagine they haven't had to make a choice between which subscription to cancel just yet. And that goes double if Blizzard's numbers are only indicative of 2011's financials. So we'll probably see a more definitive result in the coming months.

In the far-less-shocking category, Activision sent along news that, yes, that's right: this year, the publisher will once again release another entry in its more-profitable-than-the-money-printing-industry Call of Duty series -- as it has since the year 1397.

Moving forward, Blizzard expects at least two releases this year (Diablo III and Heart of the Swarm, if I had to guess) and will apparently host a major Mists of Pandaria press event in March. So there's plenty in the pipeline for the biggest gaming publisher in the world. Thank goodness. I was worried there, for a second.