GamesIndustry.biz has an article up with snippets from an interview they conducted with Blizzard developer Itzik Ben Bassat regarding consoles, and more specifically, Blizzard's feelings towards them. The sad part is that the article seems to be hinting at Blizzard's desire to bring WoW to consoles, but in actually reading the thing, you realize it has almost no useful content whatsoever.
Here's a quick synopsis;
Bassat thinks consoles are becoming mini-PCs.
He likes Microsoft's Live service.
Blizzard is keeping an eye on consoles with a theoretical possibilty of developing something for them, maybe, at some undefined future date.
Of course, after all of that, and the sensationalistic headline of "WOW developer keeps close eye on Sony and Microsoft", they also manage to toss in the fact that Blizzard has no plans to bring World of Warcraft to any console.
We understand that people desperately want World of Warcraft to be released on a home console, but fueling the flames of speculation with this kind of "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" journalism just wastes people's time. At the very least they could have been kind enough to be up front with their intentions, or, failing that, just outright lie about it. If you're going to jerk people around, promise them some fellatio or something.
God, I hate the Internet.
Contest:
9:30 PM on 02.06.2007
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You can infer what you desire, I will go by what he actually said until I read otherwise.He might be a huge fan of small games for all we know. He also earlier said :
""Online console gaming is still in its very early stages, and it needs to be developed further to provide opportunities of a scale which will be interesting to us,"
He still thinks it has room to grow,therefor the praise is not necessarily universal and certainly not unconditional.
Maybe the full or next part of the interview will be more revealing.
I admit, the Wii'd virtual console aint doing so hot here in the great states, but it still does what a console does, and Nintendo sees through all the crap nowadays.
To give a few examples, cell-phones used to just call people, now you can call people, take pictures, text message, play games, download songs, and even listen to songs. MP3 players used to play songs, now they play songs, watch movies, are capable of playing games, and more.
the prices of low end hdtv's are dropping every week, already for $500 or less it is possible to buy an offbrand, and with this new affordability, standard television will no longer be the standard.
for $300 nintendo could have included higher end graphic capabilities, enough to push them over last generation graphics and people would have still purchased it. they made a major error by not looking ahead a year and making something that would meet the technical specifications of hdtvs.*
*in the novel Jennifer Government, which is a satirical look at a world in which capitalism has run rampant, children go to schools run by mcdonalds, and citizens take their surnames from the corporations they work at; the major plot thread is a couple of executives at nike bamboozling a worker into signing a contract to murder 10 kids who purchase a new kind of nike shoe, in order to build word of mouth marketing, to make their product must-own, must-have, etc. the wii is not really that different, fake (or real shortages - it doesn't really matter) and a fad contoller ... for a system that looks like vtech on an hdtv... etc.
i realize i departed from the subject of blizzard and world of warcraft. but, well.
I wouldn't worry about the 360s ability to handle Wow's graphics, I'd worry about PS3's online capabilities handling it. You would probably have to back out of the game to read your in-game mail and check your auctions.
In general though WoW is fine where it is on pc, it would be to much of an adjustment and end up being a disadvantage to players. You wouldn't be able to load on mods you liked, talking to people would be a pain, typing would be impossible and if they built in a vent like program I would blow my brains out, imagine the barrens chat when everyone has headsets. And an audio LFG channel, forget about it.
damn what was back in 6th grade...
Depends on what you define as gaming. If you mean "casual games", then sure. But if you count in the actual "hardcore"(for the lack of a better word) games, there still have to be games exclusive to the PC to convince the average crowd that there is actually a point to buying a nice gaming rig(read: no integrated graphics) instead of/along with a console.
That said, for me, the PC will always remain my preferred gaming platform.