Back in 2006, Electronic Gaming Monthly published a rumor column that claimed Blizzard was juggling the idea of bringing their star product to home consoles, specifically the Wii. Ever since World of Warcraft's release in 2004, fans have been speculating whether or not Blizzard would expand the console spectrum so that users would actually have the chance to play the game in their own living rooms. It is an idea, likely generated by how Final Fantasy XI: Online works between computers and home consoles. This last thursday, Rob Pardo decided to shed light on the World of Warcraft console issue so media and players alike could see an inside Blizzard standpoint. Judging by what he said, the prospect of playing WoW on the Wii seems very unlikely.

The first issue with translating World of Warcraft to either the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 is the needed input device. Champions of Norrath succeded in providing a special keyboard controller for the PlayStaion 2 when it was released on February 10th, 2004. As it is, however, World of Warcraft's current combat controls require a keyboard and a mouse, (however, the World of Warcraft MMO Gaming Mouse provides necessary support). To make the game compatible, Blizzard would have to create new input devices altogether.



The largest issue, however, would actually be the updates needed to patch the game. He explained, "The certification process is pretty arduous to do that. I know that's something Microsoft is trying to work out so you can do more updates and the certification process is faster, but it's not going to be nearly as fast as we can do it. We just put it through our QA department and upload to our servers. ... Then, the other big issue is the business model. Right now, Microsoft and Sony charge platform fees for retail, but if you do an MMO there and it's subscription-based, they're going to want a cut of the subscription revenue too, and so that becomes a hurdle. So there's definitely a lot of hurdles right now for doing MMOs on a console, but it all can be overcome and I think in the next generation of consoles it'll be much easier."

Pardo confirmed that Microsoft has been looking to Blizzard for advice in the MMO genre. Their unconfirmed project has been displayed privately with Blizzard to get some special input. "Microsoft has shown us some stuff they have in development and they asked us our opinion," Pardo explained.