Porting Diablo III Went Pretty Well for Blizzard
Diablo III is officially on its way to Switch, and although a release date has yet to be announced, the port reportedly didn’t take much time at all.
The game’s senior producer Pete Stilwell spoke on the port at a San Francisco meeting, stating that it was a pretty smooth process. Apparently, the biggest challenge was “conversion on the graphics side,” but Nintendo helped out with troubleshooting.
In terms of other potential Blizzard ports to the Switch, Stilwell was optimistic.
“Without going beyond [the Diablo port], I think it was a good exploration into the platform and into the relationship with Nintendo that has been extremely positive, extremely healthy and forward-thinking.”
Diablo III was already reimagined for consoles a few years ago, which definitely helped the process. Not only that, but Blizzard also had help from Iron Galaxy, which is the same studio that helped port Skyrim to Switch. All in all, the process took about nine months.
Stilwell refused to talk about Overwatch on the Switch, though, saying that he has “nothing to say about that today,” although he did say it is “feasible.”
“Blizzard is really comprised of many unique game teams, so the game engines are equally unique,” he said. “I wish I could say it’s simple, like ‘flip a switch.’ But it’s not.”
Regardless, the Diablo II port gives players that passed the game up a chance to experience it.
“Hopefully, with the renewed attention around [the game], people will find out that it’s not just that version of the game you knew right after launch,” Stilwell said. “There’s meaningful change with Loot 2.0 and the Kanai’s Cube and all the other cool things that aren’t necessarily on the box.”
“Where the game was at launch compared to where it is now, it’s light years forward.”