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Blizzard rule out WoW on Consoles
Recent comments from lead producer J.Allen Brack don't offer much hope for PS3, 360 and Wii users
Written by Andy Griffiths, 09 March 2010
Blizzard have once again been talking candidly about the possibility of pushing World of Warcraft onto a home console, unfortunately the news still isn't good.
When asked why the larger MMOs still haven't made the transition to consoles by G4tv, J. Allen Brack had this to say.
"I think there's a lot of reasons," explained World of Warcraft's lead producer. "There's not one thing. One is, it takes a long time to develop an MMO. The lifecycle of consoles being what they are, you have to really time when your console's going to come out, what its projected lifecycle is going to be with when your game is going to be, which is challenging."
With the average console lifecycle lasting longer than ever before this shouldn't be as much of an issue as it used to be, but it seems even Blizzard are put off by their fleeting nature.
MMOZine Issue 34
For our latest World of Warcraft coverage, click here to download MMOZine Issue 34 for free.A major problem seems to be the stringent controls of the console makers, with Brack complaining that both Sony and Microsoft's quality control methods aren't an easy fit with Blizzard's patching process.
These may seem like niggles but together they culminate in a big stumbling block for any MMO developer wishing to port their product onto a console, but the biggest challenge is fitting all the required MMO functionality onto a gamepad.
"WoW was designed to be a keyboard game and its control scheme and its camera controls and the number of abilities that you have and the spells and how things work are very keyboard-centric. The idea of translating that to a gamepad is a very, very challenging proposition."
As World of Warcraft is still the biggest MMO out there it seems as though talk of it appearing on consoles will never go away, even at this late stage.
That said, Brack's comments collaborate what other prominent developers including Jagex and Turbine also tell us - Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo don't understand the MMO market.
It's looking more likely that our genre's implementation on consoles won't happen until the next generation, which is a shame because the 'big three' could really use a slice of that growing MMO pie.
World of Warcraft coverage available in MMOZine Issue 34 - click here to download it for free!
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