Tue, Mar 09, 2010 | 08:19 GMT

Blizzard talks about bringing WoW to consoles “all the time”

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Blizzard’s told G4 that the company talks about bringing World of Warcraft to the console “all the time”, but “technical challenges” are standing in the way.

WoW lead producer, J. Allen Brack, said:

“In the case of WoW, we talk about it all the time. How would we bring WoW to the console?

“There’s those technical challenges, there’s patching challenges, there’s the quality controls that we have vs. the quality controls that say, a Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo has.”

He further added: “All those things sort of raise the bar in terms of the challenges and then specifically in the case of WoW, 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.”

The MMO is set to get a new expansion later this year with Cataclysm, although a hard date is yet to be set.

Meanwhile, Blizzard VP Rob Pardo is set to give a speech at GDC on Thursday.

12 comment-trail-alt Posted in: Activision Blizzard, GDC 2010, Hot, MMO, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
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12 comments

#1

ryn.x
09/03/10, 9:46 am

There’s also the fact that currently it takes up approximately 16GB of hard drive space which I imagine falls into the technical challenges they are talking about.

I’ve never understood why an MMO has to use a controller if it’s on a console, why not just bundle a keyboard and mouse with it.

#2

Gekidami
09/03/10, 9:55 am

Now what console has a big enought storage media for WoW (and its expansions), has no limit on how much you can put into patches, and can work with any USB keyboard and mouse? Hum…

#3

nfdean
09/03/10, 10:55 am

OOOOOOOOwwwww maybe an intendo wii :P

well it has to be the best console on the market one which doesnt stop reading disks whilst ur playing an intense moment on a game or does a 3 blinking death light…

Well it must be a ps3 :)

#4

Blerk
09/03/10, 11:07 am

I imagine the biggest problem with bringing WOW to consoles would be that you’d basically be starting from scratch – you couldn’t integrate the console players into the existing servers, so you’d have to have platform-specific servers. At that point there’s no cross-over between the two so you’re relying on selling to a whole new consumer base rather than convincing existing PC/Mac players to play on their consoles as well. Given that there’s no guarantee of success on console that’s surely got to be the biggest sticking point, not easy-to-figure-out stuff like controls or storage.

#5

SplatteredHouse
09/03/10, 1:44 pm

When will somebody think often about finishing Starcraft: Ghost? It would be incredible, on today’s hardware and capability. :(

#6

blackdreamhunk
09/03/10, 2:21 pm

these comments really shows how enlighten some of these console gamers are lol

#7

mington
09/03/10, 2:27 pm

you’re almost there just add another ‘ed’ to the end

i can’t believe i’m picking up on someones spelling :P

it’s just that ‘enlightened ‘seems to be BDH’s favorite word, hell, i’ve seen him use it more on this website then i have in my whole life time

i’m helping, i’m like a good teacher giving a gentle nudge in the right direction

#8

Phoenixblight
09/03/10, 2:43 pm

@5

THe project is dead, they just want to keep milking their cash cow.

#9

hitnrun
09/03/10, 6:26 pm

Technical challenges. And the fact that WoW is so old that anyone and everyone can already play it, probably on their pocket calculators, defeating the purpose of spending tens of millions of dollars on a console port.

Assuming said calculators have 18.1 gigs of hard drive space, which is the other problem.

#10

plosionz
10/03/10, 4:18 pm

Really guys,you are really missing the point here.
The REAL tech difficulties aren’t controls.AT ALL.
Yes maybe billing/the whole “start from scratch thing”…but most of all…the current console generation,imho,doesn’t have the HARDWARE to support wow.
Think I’m joking? A 2004 game cannot run on a ps3?
WELL I’m not,I’m totally serious here.
Wow,in its current expansion (wotlk) eats up medium class computers ALIVE. The game engine is terribly optimized.
You end up,with a 1200 euros rig to something like 20-25 fps in a raid situation (25 players).The max I’ve heard of is 40 fps,in a raid situation,with a super top notch pc.
Let’s not talk about cluttered capital cities…
Yes,you can downscale settings,but wow gfx is already outdated at max settings now,what would it look like then? Like a SNES game?
Seriously,I’m not a tech junkie of consoles,but a 360 in a ICC raid environment would literally explode imo.
(Sorry for bad spelling/grammar errors,I’m not native ya kno)

#11

frod
10/03/10, 4:30 pm

While the console hardware are still loss leaders I can’t see the platform holders being particularly interested in bending the certification rules to accommodate MMOs.

#12

Joe_Gamer
13/03/10, 2:25 am

“technical challenges” translation: MS and Sony want a cut of the subscriptions and we don’t wanna give it up.

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