Blizzard has long been a maker of PC games, generally ignoring the other platforms. While some of this is down to the nature of their games not working on other platforms, such as RTS, their more RPG style games could easily find a place on a console.
While other developers are happy to simply port their games for the extra income, Blizzard isn’t one to do things half-heartedly. Now, with the possibility Diablo 3 coming to console, Blizzard assures fans that the game will be built specifically for that console, and not merely a port.
Talking to Game Informer, Jay Wilson says, “We don’t want to port it,” said Wilson, Diablo III’s director. “We want to build it for console. There’s a key difference. Certainly, a lot of things get brought over, but a port is trying to take a PC game and graft it onto a console.
“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 says the hardest part of doing this was finding a good team, as they had to bring in a whole new load of developers to work on it. After a few months of hard searching however Blizzard feels they have a “really great team”, and will also make use of their own art department to help out.
“The lead designer, Joshua Mosquiera was the leader designer of Company of Heroes and a former creative director at Ubisoft with a lot of console experience,” Wilson said. “We are starting to fill the team out with new hires and some core members of the Diablo III team. Because we are close to done with [the PC version], some groups finish before others, mostly the art group. We’re able to ferry over some art talent to the console group.
“We are still in active exploring mode; we haven’t officially announced a product. 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.
“People don’t believe us when we say we’re going to make a console game – flat out. 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 are doing now, and we’ve never had a product we felt was appropriate for it.”
