Blizzard Entertainment's SVP of story and franchise development Chris Metzen said his company is revisiting its console game development roots and bringing Diablo III to both the PlayStation 3 and the just-announced PlayStation 4.
"Blizzard and Sony have entered a strategic partnership through which we will take over the world," said Metzen. Diablo III released on PC in spring 2012.
It's been well over a decade since Blizzard released a commercial game for consoles. Metzen noted Blizzard's console development background and the time was right to revisit the space. "The trick has always been 'how'... how do we do it," he said.
Blizzard has made no secret that it was looking at a possible console version of Diablo III, for instance posting public job ads for Diablo III console game designers.
The developer of World of Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo has made the PC its focus for many years. Naturally, Blizzard's PC games are designed around the mouse, keyboard and desktop display setup, which can be difficult to translate to a couch-and-TV living room experience.
Metzen said Blizzard has "painstakingly" customized the control scheme, offering direct control over the Diablo III avatar. The game will also support four-player, full-screen co-op play.
The game should be a big factor for Activision Blizzard's financials this holiday, when the game is slated to launch.
Metzen did not offer any details on some of the business aspects of Diablo III, such as the real-money-for-virtual-items auction house, which is found in the PC version. And, being a PlayStation event, he also did not mention any forthcoming Xbox 360 version.
From what I have heard from other sites local multiplayer is confirmed. This has got me seriously interested in the console now. I got a Wii for these sorts of things. I played Castle crashers on the X360 to death because of this. We bought Minecraft on the X360 for the same reason even though the game is horrible when compared to the PC edition.
My family wants to play games together, and not this waggle party game crap. PC gamers like to do LAN play, but finding enough room / money to put 4 computers up and play is problematic. If the PS4 pushes this direction it is #1 on my list for next gen... of course I don't even have a #2 yet.
"For multiplayer, players will have the option to choose between four-player online (complete with matchmaking) and four-player local co-op modes for their couch-based warfare."
local multiplayer would be cool, funny to see diablo III coming to consoles but with the financial success it garnered on pc I can see why activision/blizzard would be willing to make the move.
I find it hard to imagine that Blizzard will allow Diablo III to be played offline on PS4 when they didn't on PC. I'm pretty confident the console version will have the same always-connected requirement. Especially with the RMAH and Sony's push for social connectivity.
I just can't picture how the controls will work for this game. I mean, I faith that they will be able to come up with something great in this regard, but I just can't picture it myself.
Also: lucky console players though, being able to benefit from all the patches since the game initially came out. I still think Path of Exile is a much more entertaining and interesting game than Diablo 3, but all of the patches have really improved the latter.
The controls were already made for the playstation in mind. It has been dumb downed so much for this reason. There are only six actions buttons and one potion button. The ps remote is already set up for that.
And yeah it will be online DRM. They haven't learned their lesson. They are just gonna hide the fact as long as possible. Who knows? Maybe I'm wrong and they did learn their lesson. But I know deep down they have just become another company based on greed.
After all, they have ,only within the last week, mentioned anything about fixing the core problems of the game. They just want to rip off the community while they can.
My family wants to play games together, and not this waggle party game crap. PC gamers like to do LAN play, but finding enough room / money to put 4 computers up and play is problematic. If the PS4 pushes this direction it is #1 on my list for next gen... of course I don't even have a #2 yet.
"For multiplayer, players will have the option to choose between four-player online (complete with matchmaking) and four-player local co-op modes for their couch-based warfare."
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/blog/7340980/Diablo_III_Coming_to_PlayS tation%C2%AE3_
and_PlayStation%C2%AE4-21_02_2013
Also: lucky console players though, being able to benefit from all the patches since the game initially came out. I still think Path of Exile is a much more entertaining and interesting game than Diablo 3, but all of the patches have really improved the latter.
And yeah it will be online DRM. They haven't learned their lesson. They are just gonna hide the fact as long as possible. Who knows? Maybe I'm wrong and they did learn their lesson. But I know deep down they have just become another company based on greed.
After all, they have ,only within the last week, mentioned anything about fixing the core problems of the game. They just want to rip off the community while they can.
Please don't waste your money. It's a trap.