In some sense, this is reasonable. If you want people to spend money on your game, preventing that by requiring they first buy a $1500 PC seems sub-optmial when everyone does in fact have a phone.
For everyone that won't play mobile games (like me), there are probably 100 people that will. And they only have $5 for an add-on, not $60 for the entire game. That's the economic reality these days. Computer ownership is becoming an obscure niche thing.
> If you want people to spend money on your game, preventing that by requiring they first buy a $1500 PC seems sub-optmial when everyone does in fact have a phone.
This is a strange way to look at it considering that Blizzard is primarily a PC game developer, and the extreme majority of their customers are PC gamers. They will already have the PC.
Blizzard is a AAA developer. Mobile games don't exactly have a reputation for being AAA quality. PC gamers often scoff at mobile gaming, and the Blizzard fan base has been hoping for a Diablo 4, so for them to announce a mobile Diablo feels like a slap in the face. It feels like they're abandoning their core audience in favor of the mobile world, which is frequently ridden with microtransactions.
From a business sense the shift is unsurprising. Yet how they handled the reveal was a seismic PR disaster that could have been avoided. You don't announce a new product designed for the casual crowd (and by extension, the start of a shift toward focusing on said market) at a convention mostly attended (and closely watched online) by the hardcore crowd. Blizzard would have been wise to fire their PR firm after this.
For everyone that won't play mobile games (like me), there are probably 100 people that will. And they only have $5 for an add-on, not $60 for the entire game. That's the economic reality these days. Computer ownership is becoming an obscure niche thing.