Diablo III on Consoles Too?

Diablo III is confirmed as being developed for consoles as well as the PC and Mac, according to this tweet from Blizzard’s Community Manager, Bashiok.

Although a console version has been mentioned in the past, it had not been confirmed until now.  Director Jay Wilson has previously said that if they were to build a console version, it would be from the ground up rather than a port.

“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 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.”

From VG247, via Game Informer‘s magazine.

Update: Bashiok has now said that the earlier tweet wasn’t meant to be an announcement: “We’re still exploring a console version, but more importantly working on the PC/Mac version.”

Diablo III Release Rumours

Best Buy have posted a release date of February 1st for Diablo III, with the date listed on the website as well as in a shop display in Rochester, Minnesota.

Although we’d love to see the game out sooner, Blizzard haven’t actually announced a release date beyond “early 2012”, and we’re still waiting for the news from the official Diablo III site itself!

Update: Bashiok, Community Manager at Blizzard, has confirmed that Diablo III does not yet have a release date.

The VGAs

In the early hours of this morning, I watched the Video Game Awards, on a live stream from GINX.TV.

I’m not really stirred by awards.. if a game is good then somebody will mention it regardless of how many awards it has won.. but I was expecting to hear about some interesting new games, and really hoping to hear something about Half Life 2: Episode 3 after hearing rumours all week.

However, I thought there was too much filler.. presenters playing stupid games, celebrities I don’t have any interest in doing weird sketches and pretending to square up for a fight, and far too much being made of the fact that the VGAs were trending on Twitter.  Look, we’re popular?

I think they were trying to appeal to the masses.. but if the masses aren’t interested in games, then why would they be watching an awards programme about games in the first place?  All that time could have been used to show us something interesting.. more behind the scenes, interviews, and dare I say.. something vaguely technical, even if simplified a bit?  I don’t think I’ll watch next time.. the gaming press can filter all this stuff out for me, leaving me with a short list of new, interesting trailers to watch the following morning instead 🙂

As for the trailers.. the first to get my interest was The Last of Us, a PS3 exclusive, single-player survival horror by Naughty Dog.  Though at first glance I thought the enemies were zombies, they are actually sufferers of a plague, and the survivors have to scavenge for food and weapons, and fight to survive.

Epic Games‘ new title, Fortnite, also looked good..a combination of scavenging, base building and defense, with survival against some kind of alien force which attacks at night.  This game doesn’t yet have a publisher, and hasn’t been announced for any specific platform yet.. I’m hoping PC so I can play it with friends! 🙂

Diablo III‘s trailer was a fiery, showy affair.. this game was always going to be a must-buy for me, but the trailer was good to see anyway.  BioShock Infinite also made an appearance, though this was another game from my to-buy list after loving BioShock and BioShock 2.