Blizzard's Diablo IV has set a new record for the biggest launch on Xbox Game Pass. In an interview with the Strictly Business podcast (via Variety), Xbox Studios head Matt Booty revealed that Diablo IV reached over 10 million hours of play in its first 10 days after launching on Game Pass in March.
This makes Diablo IV the largest first-party game launch on Game Pass to date in terms of hours played. According to Booty, the massive number of players surpassed all previous Game Pass launches. The previous record was held by Starfield, which garnered the most Game Pass subscriptions on its launch day last year.
In case you missed it, Diablo IV landed PC and Xbox Game Pass last March. However, PC Game Pass requires to take a few extra steps before starting. In addition to the Xbox app for PC, players will also need to have or create a Blizzard Battle.net account and link it to their Xbox profile.
Diablo IV was originally released on June 5, 2023 for PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One. However, the launch of Game Pass in March has brought the action RPG to an even wider audience through the subscription service.
Booty also talked about the recent studio closures at Xbox Game Studios;
We started really in earnest with acquiring and building out our studios portfolio in 2018, and then we had the wonderful ZeniMax/Bethesda acquisition in 2021… and then [in the fall of 2023], bringing on board Activision, Blizzard and King. But it has taken a while to sort of get all of that up to speed...
But the fact that we delivered, hopefully, a critical mass of excitement, and it didn’t depend on those things that we historically go to, I think it’s just a good indicator and a good sign that we’ve hit that stride and that we’re going to be able to continue to deliver at that cadence moving forward.
Xbox and PC gamers have been anticipating new Activision Blizzard games coming to Game Pass since the $69 billion deal closed. As part of the announcement at the Xbox Games Showcase, Call of Duty Black Ops 6 was confirmed for Xbox Game Pass. The next game in Activision's hit first-person shooter series is set to launch on October 26 for PC, Xbox and PlayStation.
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