Diablo III is coming to the PlayStation, but integration with the PC version of the game is not.
Blizzard’s announcement of Diablo III for the PlayStation 3 and 4 at Sony’s big shindig last week was met with, let’s say, mixed reaction. Diablo on consoles: very cool. Offline play for Diablo III on consoles, after Blizzard spent months swearing up and down to PC gamers that the nature of the game made it utterly impossible: not so much. But the possibility of cross-platform play does have an allure, and the promise of new features for the PC being catalyzed by the PlayStation was no doubt in the minds of many long-time Diablo fans.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for the chance to head back to Tristram with your console cousins. “While we think cross-platform play would be awesome, there are currently no plans to allow connectivity between PlayStation Network and Battle.net (this is pretty standard for most games that have PC and console support),” Diablo III Community Manager “Vaeflare” wrote on the Battle.net forums. “As a result, the characters on your Battle.net account and PlayStation account will also remain separate.”
“In terms of allowing an analog controller hookup for the PC, we don’t have any plans for that kind of support right now,” she continued. “Similarly, since Diablo III for console was designed with a controller in mind, the PlayStation version of Diablo III will not support USB mice or keyboards.”
It’s perhaps not a terribly surprising revelation but it sounds a bit to me (without wanting to read too much into it) like Blizzard is washing its hands of the PC version of the game and putting its focus on the console market instead. That may be a premature and unfair assessment, but if Blizzard can’t even work controller support into the game, the addition of an offline mode for PC – which I think would bring an awful lot of erstwhile fans back into the fold – would appear to be just a pleasant but faint pipe dream.
Source: Battle.net
