Rob Pardo has been speaking about the prospects of Blizzard’s much talked about RPG Diablo III hitting the shelves in the next 12 months. The answer seems to be an emphatic no.

Speaking to Techland recently, Blizzard’s Executive VP of Game Design ruled out the possibility of Diablo III being released in 2010. “We always announce all of our games too early,” Pardo added, speeaking of  Diablo III’s unveiling at Blizzard’s Worldwide Invitational in 2008. “We realize that and go, ‘You know what? Next time we’re not going to do that.’ And then we always fail at that. But I’d rather fail at that than fail at making the game great. I think it’s safe to say that, yeah, (Diablo III) is not going to be out next year.”

It’s not all bad news for fans of the Diablo franchise though. Pardo goes on to affirm that rather than rushing to meet concrete release dates, Diablo II will be out when its ready and not a minute before.

“We’re definitely not fiscal calendar-driven,” he said, “and we know that our fanbase is not going to hold us to a fiscal calendar. With (2007’s World of Warcraft expansion) Burning Crusade, we missed Christmas by about three weeks. We could’ve shoved it out the door, but we decided we didn’t need to get it into stores for Christmas. We just needed it to be great and our playerbase is going to buy it whenever it hits the shelves.”

At least one half of the games industry’s largest publisher can see sense. Perhaps Bobby Kotick can take a leaf out of Rob Pardo’s book.