Another rumor regarding Blizzard's love affair with consoles

by Kyle Horner Jan 11th 2008 at 9:00PM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Consoles, Rumors

Here we go again, another rumor that World of Warcraft is going to appear on a "next-gen" console near you. This is one of those rumors that have been brought up time and time again. This little buzzing rumor is like that one annoying fly you can't seem to kill for good. What brought it up this time was a comment made by Chris Ansell, Director of Product Globalisation for Radical Entertainment and came through the website Gameplayer.

Radical was recently giving a presentation on their upcoming title Prototype. After demonstrating the game's online co-operative features Chris was asked by Gameplayer if these features would even be available for off-line play. In short the answer was no, their focus is apparently online feature-specific and different types of new play in the online space. The quote responsible for the new rumor is this:

"...we have to make sure we support it. Because next-gen consoles demand it. We have to be online. Obviously it's gonna get more and more like what WoW are doing, with thousands of players on consoles, eventually. Which is pretty exciting. I can't wait for that. It'll be pretty fun."

All right, so someone could assume this means a version of WoW on consoles, except that Blizzard has denied this repeatedly. Even with this very new rumor, Vivendi Australia quickly contacted Gameplayer to inform them that the comment only meant the future of next-gen game development and how multiplayer was an ever-increasing aspect of it.

What we think this means is that it's not WoW that we can expect to show up on consoles, but whatever Blizzard is working on beyond Starcraft II. Hm, now there's something to speculate about -- World of (insert favorite IP here) coming to a PS3 and Xbox 360 near you?

Tags: activision-blizzard, blizzard, breaking, console, consoles, ps3, radical-entertainment, vivendi, world-of-warcraft, wow, xbox, xbox-360

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Ghen said on 9:50PM 1-11-2008

Well I guess with a chatpad attachment or a keyboard and mouse you could do it, but its not like WoW is breaking computers like crysis here.. Everyone with enough money for a console probably has a computer capable of running WoW.

Plus the endgame requires mods. If you don't have certain ones you just won't be invited to raids no matter what your skill level is.

Darniaq said on 10:15PM 1-11-2008

I really doubt WoW could appear on any of the current consoles as is. The biggest reason is that there is simply way too much information contained on the screen at any given time. A second reason is that, as is, you absolutely would require a keyboard at least, keyboard/mouse ideally. That's not bad except, really, how many more people would they get by going to a console with WoW?

Now, a STARCRAFT MMO on the other hand... build it from the ground up to be more MMOFPS than RPG, and you could tailor this for both PC and console.

Animagnum said on 11:06PM 1-11-2008

I don't see how that quote fuels any speculation that WoW is coming to consoles. He's just predicting that console games will eventually have simultaneous player-bases with numbers in the thousands, just like WoW. MMOs have been on consoles for a while now -- sorta -- and they will only continue to be with the various titles coming to 360 and PS3. Enough MMOs use voice chat now that the argument about needing a keyboard is a moot point. Plus, PS3 and the 360 support USB keyboards.

Aigarius said on 11:20PM 1-11-2008

It would be really easy to simply demand the use of a USB or Bluetooth keyboard and mouse for the PS3/X360 version of WoW. And the addons could easily be stored on the built-in hard drives. I guess even a version of Vent and Teamspeak could be provided.

The benefit would be the powerful and unified platform that would allow a higher graphics level and give a hope of more than 10 fps in a boss fight for those of us with sub1000$ computers.

Ghen said on 8:16AM 1-12-2008

its more the fact that Activision is console++ that fuels the rumors.

Rex said on 11:02AM 1-12-2008

I'd pick up WoW again if it came to a console, if for no other reason than to see what it's like on a 50 inch hi def.

The keyboard and mouse already exist. So yah, that's a non-issue. Go Google - xbox 360 keyboard - and you'll see it in action. They'd probably bundle those peripherals in a WoW package though.

Xbox Live already has the voice chat capabilities in place. The only hurdle I see if what someone already mentioned - getting mods to work properly on a console version.