Diablo 3 Will Be Built For Consoles, Not Ported by Blizzard
Blizzard, the studio behind hit franchises like StarCraft or World of Warcraft, has once again talked about bringing Diablo III, its next big release, onto consoles, saying that its current team is still exploring the idea, mainly because the company wants to really build it for consoles from the ground up, instead of porting it from the PC.
Blizzard made a huge amount of money for many years despite focusing just on the PC platform, unlike other studios that have quickly started to concentrate just on consoles like the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, abandoning the old PC.
Still, Blizzard admits that it's quite interested in consoles, and said on more than one occasion that it wants to bring Diablo III, the role playing dungeon crawler set for release next year, onto such devices, not just on the PC.
Speaking with Game Informer, Diablo 3 game director Jay Wilson stated that the studio is building up its console team, largely because it wants to properly explore the idea of bringing the title to devices like the PS3 or Xbox 360.
"We have a really great team," he said. "We are starting to fill the team out with new hires and some core members of the Diablo 3 team.
"We are still in active exploring mode; we haven't officially announced a product," Wilson added. "We say that because we like our product announcements to be a big deal. We haven't been as secretive about this one because our biggest barrier is actually getting a console team."
Wilson also mentioned that the studio learned from its failed console project, Starcraft Ghost, which was scrapped early during its development, and doesn't want to make any mistake of Diablo 3.
"People don't believe us when we say we're going to make a console game. I understand why they don't believe us, because we've tried this before. We've also never invested in it to the degree that we're doing now, and we've never had a product that we felt was appropriate for it."
"We don't want to port it," Wilson emphasized. "We want to build it for console. There's a key difference. Our goal is to make a game that feels like it's natively made for a console. If we make it, we want it to feel like a Blizzard game and that we built it for that platform from the ground up."
Until Blizzard actually confirms that Diablo III is heading to consoles, however, the PC version, scheduled to be released in early 2012, is the only taste fans will get of the RPG series.
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