Diablo 4 Season 7 faces new competition: the original Diablo, which is coming to Xbox Game Pass just a week earlier

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Old is gold

Diablo 4's new merc using his shield to help someone
(Image credit: Blizzard)

Rightful heir to your attention Diablo 4 Season 7 is facing a little friendly fire from the original Diablo, which will make it onto Xbox Game Pass exactly one week before the content update releases. 

Xbox shared the news in a January 7 announcement, which lists everything coming to Game Pass in the first half of the month, including Lightyear Frontier and EA Sports UFC 5. It also, rightly, describes the legendary 1997 game Diablo as "the groundbreaking action-RPG that defined the genre."

"With its satisfying progression, deep character customization, and intense battles," Xbox continues, "Diablo delivers an unforgettable journey through a dark gothic fantasy world." Those who have not yet played the game before picking up online dungeon crawler Diablo 4 might be totally shocked at how different the two are from each other; Diablo is dusty medieval warfare with lots of potions and pain, while Diablo 4 is a grindfest killfest.

Diablo's Season 7 will only make that more true. Once it releases on January 21, ludicrously powerful Spiritborn builds will be humbled as they are rebalanced and other builds are buffed. 

"In Season 7, we are going to be fixing all the unintended interactions that we found with Spiritborn," lead class designer Adam Z. Jackson said ominously in 2024. "We'll also be making balance adjustments to bring it in line with the other classes, so you can expect a lot of change there. But until then, enjoy what you've got now while it's there."

Blizzard's 2024 stats expose your 480 million deaths, 1.7 trillion murdered demons, 8.34 billion hours played, and how allergic Americans are to the metric system.

Ashley Bardhan
Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.