Diablo 3 was officially confirmed for Nintendo Switch earlier today, after months of rumors and leaks. This marks, of course, the first time that a Blizzard game has hit a Nintendo system in 15 years, and the first major Nintendo console game by Blizzard since StarCraft on the Nintendo 64. It’s been a while, is what I’m saying.
But in spite of all that time that passed, Blizzard has revealed that the console port had been an easy process, with Nintendo chipping in with assistance whenever Blizzard ran into trouble. As you may expect, it was tweaking the graphics for Nintendo’s comparatively weaker than the competition hybrid console that posed the biggest challenge.
Blizzard didn’t just have help from Nintendo, though- Iron Galaxy, the folks behind the excellent Skyrim port for Switch last year, assisted with the project, which took total of nine months, senior producer Pete Stilwell told Kotaku.
Stilwell also said, without committing to anything, that this could mark the beginning of a long term relationship between Nintendo and Blizzard. “Yeah,” he said, when prodded about the possibility of other games from the company on the Switch. “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.”
So that’s good to hear- Blizzard has a great many games that could work ideally on the Switch, such as Overwatch and Hearthstone. Maybe Diablo is just the start of Blizzard dipping its toes into the Nintendo pool after more than a decade again.