Console Version of Diablo 3 Is No Port

PC gamers who were fortunate enough to get into the Diablo III beta might be having the time of their lives currently. Being able to play a match online and early, incomplete or not, in one of the most highly rated and enjoyable game franchises ever is a privilege many people would enjoy. Happily, Blizzard has confirmed that the dungeon crawler, should a console version be officially announced, will feel like its own version and not just a quick port of the PC version.

Months ago, Blizzard had announced that they were putting out calls for applicants to build the best console team they could to ensure that a console edition of Diablo III would be as good as it could be possibly be. Unfortunately, while a small three-man team currently makes up the growing console development team, Blizzard has no current plans to announce a version of Diablo III coming to current consoles.

The current market of console players would love to see Diablo III on their television set, rather than a PC monitor. It wouldn't be such a bad thing to remember the rather lackluster entries Blizzard had made to consoles before, including Diablo I or StarCraft 64. On the other hand, The Lost Vikings was pretty awesome. With many recent games taking strides in revitalizing the dungeon crawler franchise like Torchwood or Crimson Alliance or DeathSpank, it would be natural to see Diablo III join the ranks.

Diablo III's director, Jay Wilson, went on record to comment about building a console version and not porting it.

"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. 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."

Wilson had previously commented that playing Diablo III with an Xbox 360 controller felt a lot better and natural than the traditional mouse/keyboard combination. Wilson added that the rumblings of console development had been less secretive because the main priority was building a team to make the game first, which makes more than enough sense.

Fans of the series are still awaiting for the time they can officially return to the world of Sanctuary and banish yet another elder demon who's sole priority is destroying the cities of men. As a reminder of how great Diablo III is, you can watch nearly an hour of beta footage and be jealous.

It's great to hear that Blizzard is going to take some time to make a console version right. The official release date for the PC version hasn't even been announced, so any kind of console related announcements at this point would be nothing but premature and could even be damaging to Blizzard. It's coming, and maybe that's all that we need to know.

Diablo III releases when it's done for PC.

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Source: CVG