Diablo III Release Date Announced

"After many years of hard work by our development team and months of beta testing by hundreds of thousands of dedicated players around the world, we’re now in the homestretch," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We look forward to putting the final polish on Diablo III over the next two months and delivering the ultimate action-RPG experience to gamers worldwide starting on May 15."

Diablo III will be released for Windows and Mac for $59.99 (digital and retail) along with an exclusive alabaster-white Collector's Edition for $99.99. For those of you Diablo fans out there, the Collector's Edition will include the following:

  • Full game on DVD-ROM
  • Behind-the-scenes Blu-ray/DVD two-disc set
  • The Diablo III soundtrack CD
  • 208-page Art of Diablo III book
  • 4 GB USB soulstone (including full versions of Diablo II and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction®)
  • Diablo skull base
  • Exclusive in-game content for Diablo III, World of Warcraft® and StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty®

Now if you have already signed up for Blizzard's World of Warcraft Annual Pass, you will receive a full digital copy of Diablo III for free! As I am writing this I am currently 3 GB into the 7.60 GB pre-download of the client. If you haven't signed up for the annual pass yet, you will only have until May 1st before the opportunity is gone. You can learn more here.