Blizzard has revealed that they are interested in bringing World of Warcraft to console.
In fact, as it turns out, they talk about it all the time. As reported in Video Games Chronicle, this is what the game’s vice president and executive producer Holly Longdale told GamesRadar about this idea:
“It’s a complicated question. For a console audience, the approachability is likely going to be different.”
Right now, we’re focused on the Worldsoul Saga. But if that comes up then we’ll reexamine things but, man, we’ve got enough to deal with right now.
We’ve got these three expansions and we are so excited about them. But, yeah, of course. It would be very insincere to say that we’re not, like… of course we’re talking about that. We are Microsoft now.”
Blizzard has notoriously resisted requests to bring World of Warcraft to console for decades. The general idea is simply that the game just cannot be translated over to consoles. That notion, of course, is just no longer acceptable in 2023.
In particular, Final Fantasy XIV demonstrates that not only is it possible to bring the MMO experience to console in a way that’s acceptable to players on a technical level. It also shows that the market for such games is huge on console. We also now know it’s worth making that effort. When you consider that Square Enix under Naoki Yoshida literally had to revive the game from immolation, and were able to pull it off, you realize that this isn’t just something the studio does to placate a vocal minority.
Blizzard sells the idea as something that they can better do now because they are owned by Microsoft. They will certainly have an easier time with firsthand access to Microsoft’s technology, particularly the technology that drives Game Pass for PC and Xbox consoles.
But this is also certainly an opportunity driven by the fact that World of Warcraft just needs to find a new audience. One can say that after two decades, PC gaming is simply a red ocean for the game, and consoles could be a blue ocean that it can finally explore.
And perhaps, in a roundabout way, this would also ease World of Warcraft’s transition to where it could make the most money out of all the markets: mobile. Pulling this off would require that Blizzard rebuild that 20 year infrastructure to work on new technology, but they may very well be up to the challenge with Microsoft’s backing now.
