14 DAY TRIAL // BlizzCon was a flood of news, with the company talking to fans about the fresh World of Warcraft expansion, named Cataclysm, about Starcraft II and its wonderful map editor, and, of course, about Diablo III, announcing yet another character class, the Street Fighter-inspired close quarters Monk.
But one detail went pretty much unnoticed for a few days after the convention: the fact that Blizzard might be close to, for the first time, creating a game for other platforms than the good old PC. Yes, evidence is mounting that Diablo III might be coming to home gaming consoles, presumably the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft.
Blizzard itself talked about the issue last year, saying that, from a technical and theoretical point of view, the transition to console was possible. Recently, a journalist working for GameTrailers TV, posted on Twitter that “Paul Sams of Blizzard says they haven't ruled out Diablo III for consoles, and are currently talking to the first parties.”
Basically, the theory part is done and now Blizzard is talking directly to Microsoft and Sony to make sure that the experience offered could be on par with that delivered on the PC.
Diablo III is now officially known not to arrive in 2010, which means that the people who are working on it at Blizzard have plenty of time to make the decision related to consoles.
The main development work on the videogame will be taking place on the PC and ports can be arranged once the game is code complete. It would be an audacious move on the part of the company to go to consoles, especially given the following that hack and slash titles could have there. Knowing Blizzard, it will probably not announce anything definite before the end of the next year.