Diablo III's game director, Jay Wilson, recently told PC Gamer that Blizzard experimented with changes to Diablo III's mouse-based controls, including a more "direct" scheme that was implemented on an Xbox 360-style controller.
The results, Wilson says, were suprisingly enjoyable. "With some of our early experiments in putting a direct control scheme into the game via a 360-like analogue controller, I’ve been ‘Oh this feels even better, with direct control.'”
Don't get your hopes up (or down), though. At this stage in the game, it doesn't look like the PC version of Diablo III will offer support for gamepads at launch. Still, Wilson says Blizzard hasn't ruled it out for the future. “I can pretty much guarantee that if we decide to do a console version that we will look to support a pad on the PC," Wilson remarked, "but initially with release I don’t think we’ll be ready.”
There's been widespread speculation that Blizzard intends to bring Diablo III to consoles ever since the company posted a job listing for console developers back in November of 2010. While there's been no official announcement, several Blizzard employees have expressed a firm intent to make the port happen. At last month's Gamescom trade show, lead designer Josh Mosqueira told an audience that Blizzard was "very, very serious about bringing the Diablo III experience to the console."
The PC version of Diablo III has yet to receive a launch date, though sometime in 2012 seems increasingly likely. A closed beta of the game launched earlier this week.