Blizzard Talking Console Controls for ‘Diablo 3’, Still Won’t Confirm It.
Blizzard hasn’t officially confirmed console versions of Diablo 3. That didn’t stop them at Blizzcon from discussing them working on getting the controls right for a console version. Which is about as a soft-but-official acknowledgement as you can get.
Blizzard’s Diablo 3 developers are on the main stage at BlizzCon 2011 right now, and game director Jay Wilson spoke a little bit about the potential console version of the game. Nothing has changed — there is no officially announced console version. But Wilson did confirm that Blizzard has hired a team to work on it, and that the company has been iterating on console controls.
“The movement actually feels better on the controller,” Wilson said, in response to a fan’s question. “Targeting is the issue.” Most of the schemes the team has come up for choosing what to attack and loot require a reticule, “which we really don’t want to do,” Wilson said. “Monster distribution and AI also feels a little bit different than it does on the PC version.”
And Blizzard won’t even say that there’s a console version coming “because we don’t want to announce something until we’re sure.” Obviously the team is working on it, and obviously Diablo 3 on a console would be extremely popular — the first game did officially come to the original PlayStation all those years ago. But as Wilson says, the team wants to assure that “if it goes on a console, it doesn’t compromise the PC game in any way, and it feels like it was built for the console.”
I’m a console gamer, but Blizzard titles are the few games I can’t imagine playing on a console. Why? The controls. Why do I think I’d mind the controller over keyboard on these games and not all the other ones that come out for both?
I don’t know.
I’m crazy.