Blizzard has just closed out the third-best fiscal year for top-line revenue in its entire history, and a large share of the credit belongs to Diablo 4.
This isn’t forum chatter. The claim originates from an internal email attributed to Blizzard President Johanna Faries, circulated to employees in the run-up to BlizzCon 2026, scheduled for September 12-13 in Anaheim, California.
One detail is bound to dominate the conversation: inside Microsoft, Blizzard is reportedly regarded as the “top-performing studio.”
The wording of the email itself
Faries, quoted in full: “In [Fiscal Year ’26] Blizzard ended the year as the top-performing studio in Xbox’s studios division, and this past year has marked our third highest fiscal for top-line revenue in Blizzard’s history…FY25 and FY26 were our first back-to-back years of growth since FY17…Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred and Overwatch drove exceptional performance in particular, with Overwatch delivering its strongest quarter since 2022.”
Go over that a second time. Consecutive growth years, something the studio hadn’t managed since FY17. For an operation of this scale, that’s a lengthy dry spell.
What’s surprising is where the praise lands. World of Warcraft doesn’t take top billing on this occasion. The spotlight belongs to Diablo 4 and Overwatch, the latter having shed the “2” from its title this year.
Faries sees BlizzCon as a launchpad
She makes no attempt to hide it. “It’s my hope that the event can shine a light on the work underway at Blizzard, and that it can serve as a powerful springboard into a new era of momentum and excitement behind our mission to bring joy and belonging for communities worldwide,” Faries said.
Put plainly: the company believes it has momentum, and Anaheim is where it intends to cash it in.
No previous Diablo has been supported this long
Two major expansions deep already. Diablo 3 never got that far, stopping at Reaper of Souls and the smaller Necromancer pack. Diablo 1 only ever received Hellfire. Diablo 2 only ever received Lord of Destruction.
The arithmetic of the franchise isn’t complicated. No Diablo has ever received this much support for this long, and the revenue figures explain exactly why.
Nor is it the same game it was on release day. So many changes have stacked up that describing it as the original product hardly holds.
Endless patching is simply how Blizzard operates
None of this is a departure. Both Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 collected years’ worth of updates and quality-of-life additions. Diablo 2 even received a complete remake in Resurrected, alongside a mountain of patches and mods over its lifetime.
Polishing an existing foundation is something the Diablo teams have been doing for decades, and they’re good at it.
The single genuine stain on the record is Diablo 3’s launch, dogged by connection stability issues and the controversy surrounding its real-money auction house. Set that aside and the series’ reputation is spotless.
Fans have plenty on their plate
With Diablo 2: Resurrected, Diablo Immortal, Diablo 4 and the older entries still up and running, there is arguably more live Diablo available now than at nearly any other point in the series’ existence. The reason it doesn’t register that way is that none of it landed as a single headline event.
Blizzard’s own path has been uneven since day one. It went from a small outfit to an industry mainstay at remarkable speed, and eventually became a giant folded into Microsoft and Xbox. Diablo played an enormous role in that story, right back to the first game that upended the dungeon-crawling genre.
So where does that leave Diablo 5
Some distance away. The current cycle needs to run its course first, which means an announcement is unlikely for a number of years.
The plausible window only opens once at least one further expansion is on the table for Diablo 4. At that stage, talk of a sequel shifts from guesswork to planning.
Still, take the financials, add Microsoft’s internal endorsement, then factor in leadership publicly casting BlizzCon as a springboard, and Diablo 5 starts to look near-inevitable.
Nobody records their third-best revenue year ever on the strength of a dungeon crawler and then quietly shelves the dungeon crawler.
Faries described it as “a new era of momentum.” Tucked inside that phrase is a fifth Diablo, biding its time.