The vice on the PS4 and Xbox One gets a little tighter as Diablo 4 boss agrees "there's always a time and a place" to drop last-gen
Apr. 10, 2024“I don’t think we’re at that time”
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Diablo series boss Rod Fergusson knows the time is coming to move on from the PS4 and Xbox One, but says that time ain’t now.
Speaking toIGN, Fergusson admitted there’s a “time and place” to drop last-gen consoles, which are now over a decade old in this case, and release content exclusively for the current gen PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. That said, he reckons there’s still life left in the older hardware, at least when it comes toDiablo 4.
“There’s always a time and a place for when maybe it’s time to no longer support a platform,” Fergusson said. “I don’t think we’re at that time. But we have a long road for Diablo 4, and so we do talk about, ‘hey we have this idea for a feature, but maybe it’s not a feature our min spec or gen eight players can support, so it’s not something we can do today.’ But we keep pushing the boundaries on that.”
Despite the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S now sitting somewhere in the middle of their respective life cycles -Sony said in February that the PS5 is in “the latter half” of the console cycle- there are still plenty of games, particularly in the live-service space, that still support last-gen hardware. In Diablo 4’s case, there are technical features that are exclusive to current-gen, like ray tracing, but content-wise there’s complete parity with last-gen consoles, which Diablo art director John Mueller described as a “creative challenge.”
“We’re pretty good at finding fallbacks,” Mueller said. “That’s how we think of it. We’ll figure out a way to do a fallback, like if there’s something really awesome we want to do. I don’t think we’ve been gated by it. We’ve generally leaned into it, and it’s been a creative challenge to figure out, okay, how do we accomplish that on gen eight? So the two things will look slightly different depending on the platform.”
“It’s part of the conversation, always,” Fergusson added. “Like, we have this idea for a new feature, can we do it based on what we’re supporting today? Yes or no? And generally, as John was saying, we can. We find ways to do it.”
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
15 months after a licensing spat, Blizzard and NetEase have made up to bring games like Diablo, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft back to China.
After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar’s west coast Staff Writer, I’m responsible for managing the site’s western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I’m too afraid to finish.
Borderlands 4 reveal confirmed for The Game Awards as Gearbox teases the “first look at the most ambitious Borderlands yet”
How to beat the Path of Exile 2 Bloated Miller boss fight
Todd Howard “rolled his eyes” at the idea of Troy Baker playing Indiana Jones in the Great Circle, but the Bethesda boss later told him “you’re doing a hell of a job”
