Blizzard Iterating on Diablo III Console Version

While they don’t want to officially announce a console version of Diablo III until they’re sure it’s going to deliver, game director Jay Wilson did at least talk a bit about the iterating they’ve done on the console controls during today’s BlizzCon. Joystiq reports:

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 fine with a console version as long as he’s spot-on with that “it doesn’t compromise the PC game in any way” statement.