Just found out that Blizzard may be breaking into the console market with Diablo III
And here's what I think about the news:
Well, on the one hand Blizzard are an incredible developer/publisher releasing groundbreaking PC games consistently: World of Warcraft being the first popular MMO & the Starcraft series owning a chunk of South Korea. Their foot in the PC market is well established, for good reason they're looked on in awe as one of the Great PC Developers, and any game they create is looked forward to with much anticipation.
So why go to the "dumb market" of console gaming?
The answer probably lies with how they look at their game, they state that it feels good with a controller - and a hack and slash game like Diablo 3 to me sounds like it would! So they'd, as a good experimenting company should, probably try and see how the game works on console. It's not like Blizzards ugly sister (Activision) has a lack of console ability, so Blizzard has plenty of support for this move. It also lets the company attract more attention from the console market - ask most console homeboys and they won't have a clue about Blizzard.
The problems lie with, however, is how they're going to treat their platforms differently and similarily. It's been stated that Diablo 3 will have a marketplace for users to buy & sell their items, and that the items will have real world value. Furthermore, Diablo 3 will have a always-online feature - meaning players have to be always online to play anything (single player or multiplayer) which is intersting news for console gamers if Blizzard wish to implement this on those platforms. It's a puzzle that needs much thought, because if you remove the marketplace and always-online gameplay then will the console gamers not take to this new product - knowing they're getting a worse off deal than their PC buddies?
In general I think that for Blizzard, Diablo 3 is the perfect game to try break into the console market. Good luck to them if they try go through with this.