Slashdot Mirror
Diablo 3 Coming To Consoles
RobinEggs writes "After long speculation and a few affirmative hints, Blizzard has confirmed that Diablo 3 will have a console version. Responding to a fan who asked him to 'confirm or deny' a console version of D3, Blizzard community manager Bashiok said, 'Yup. Josh Mosqueira is lead designer for the Diablo console project.' Here's hoping Blizzard remains one of the few companies to fully develop both the console and PC version of their titles, rather than simply porting the Xbox version to PC. I think we've all had enough of bizarre scrolling, menus that can't be used with a mouse, and 'Controls' menus that don't even bother replacing the 360 controller image with an actual keyboard layout."
Given that the Diablo 3 beta has been around for a while on PC, I would expect that the console version will be ported from the PC rather than the other way round.
Once the subscriber base for WoW starts falling off, they'll manage to pull the employees away from the giant cocaine fountain in the lobby and the omnihedonic stimulus cocoon in the break room.
At that point, it should be the usual 3-5 years.
I would except that Blizzard has pretty much admitted to fucking things up, i haven't been interested in Diablo 3 in quite a while because of all the "features" they've put in to prevent people from playing in unapproved ways. Any hope of me buying it evaporated the moment that I found out that there would be no singleplayer game and that there would be no LAN play either.
But Torchlight was made by the people that made Diablo 1 and 2. Diablo 3 is created by a completely different team.
What's the negative aspect of the auction house? From what I see there's one auction house that uses in-game gold and another that uses real currency, and as far as I can tell neither of them are required for a player to use.
Well, for one, it gives them an incentive to design the game and item drops to maximize trading at the (real money) auction house rather than making it the most fun. Not that they will likely do that from the outset, but the promise of getting a portion of all trade at the auction house can't help but be a driver as they tweak item drop rates - once they have that ability, at some point a manager is going to point out that they could extract $x from the community by just doing this or that minor tweak. Activision won't be able to help themselves, even if Blizzard resisted initially.
There are other arguments, but to me that is the main one. It gives them an incentive to tweak the game to drive profits rather than just make the best game they can.
We have a cocaine fountain in the lobby? Why does no one tell me of these things?
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
> but you can always just get online in the same room.
Tell that to Ubisoft and RB6:LV2 (Rainbow Six: Las Vegas 2) You are ASSUMING the login servers NEVER go down.
Why the fuck do I need to go online when I already have friends+family in the same room ??