by Fallout New Vegas director Josh Sawyer has suggested that Diablo 2 actually helped sell his first D&D RPG, Icewind Dale, by launching on the same day.
According to Wikipedia, Diablo 2 launched on June 28, while Icewind Dale launched a day later on June 29, but the feeling remains that the two games launched very, very close together. And in an interview with Edge Magazine, Sawyer acknowledged the perception that an RPG like Icewind Dale from a relatively small studio (at the time) launching at the same time as a massive sequel like Diablo 2 wouldn’t be good for the former’s sales.
“Icewind Dale launched on the same day as Diablo 2, which sounds like it would be catastrophically bad, but it actually did quite well,” said Sawyer, suggesting the exact opposite: that the timing actually benefited Icewind Dale. “There were lines and lines of people to get Diablo 2, but a lot of them were into fantasy and isometric games, so they said, ‘Icewind Dale – what is this? Yeah, we’ll pick that up too.’
Nowadays, video game release dates are regularly shuffled to avoid clashing with other launches. Probably the most high-profile example I can think of in recent memory is Larian sidestepping Baldur’s Gate 3 release plans to avoid clashing with Starfield. Last year, THQ Nordic completely postponed 2023 survival horror game Alone in the Dark because there were “too many great games” launching that year, and boy, isn’t that the truth.
Now go ahead and play best RPGs out there.
