Blizzard developer claims Diablo III is better with a controller

While discussing the upcoming, and recently delayed, game director Jay Wilson had a few interesting morsels to toss at starving fans of the series. But the biggest news is not so much what he said, but rather what may have been implied by it.

“We don’t see ourselves as a PC developer –- we see ourselves as a game developer. It’s just that the games that we wanted to make suit the PC platform,” Wilson told PC Gamer. “We don’t believe you can make a StarCraft-style RTS and make it ‘Blizzard great’ on a console. We do believe you could make an RTS that would be on a console, but we would have [to have] that idea, and that spark and that passion to make it.

“One of the reasons why we’re exploring the idea of a console version of Diablo III because we feel that the controls and the style of the game lend itself to a console. With some of our early experiments in putting a direct control scheme into the game via a 360-like analogue controller, I’ve been ‘Oh this feels even better, with direct control…’”

It’s no secret that Blizzard has been eyeing the console market for Diablo III, but it is a bit surprising to hear the emphasis that the company is putting on the console side of development. Although Blizzard rarely does things in half measures, it was hard to shake the idea that Diablo III on the consoles would be little more than an afterthought–a ported version developed to cash in on the console market while the company primarily pushed the PC version. From what Wilson said, it appears that Blizzard is taking the console development very seriously.

It also raises questions about the future of Blizzard who has been fairly content to remain a PC first developer with games like World of Warcraft and its recent expansions and StarCraft II. Will we see possibly see a Blizzard game developed for the console? Time will tell.

Diablo III is currently in beta testing, which is accessible through invite only. Following the recently announced delay, expect Diablo III….well, expect it when it arrives, hopefully sometime in 2012.