Diablo III on consoles. The "No bullshit" edition.

[ChipMHazard]

The console version of Diablo III, which has been a long time coming, was announced at PAX to not include either DRM [It was announced earlier this year that there would be offline mode] or RMAH (Real Money Auction House). There are most certainly some reasons for this besides it not being the PC version [Yarr, we be all pirates!], like possibly not wanting to make a deal with Sony about getting part of the RMAH sales.

Official word on the exclusion of the RMAH:
"Which leads to some other changes, namely the removal of the real money auction house. “The ecosystems on the PC and console are very different,” Mosqueira explained. “There were some technical reasons we had to go with offline, but again once you have an offline experience, even if we wanted to bring in the auction house, it just becomes problematic. How do you validate? How do you make sure there is no duping or any of that stuff?”

There might even be some legal restrictions that prevent them from putting DRM on the consoles, like Sony not allowing always on DRM.
So it's going to be interesting to see just how popular it will become on the new generation, and whether or not it's going to become a console focused series. Hopefully they won't start forgetting their Diablo PC playerbase and continue to, at the very least, design each version around its respective platform.
To me it kinda just feels like a kick in the nuts for the PC crowd.

http://www.destructoid.com/diablo-ii...m-249402.phtml

My reply to Blizzard is as follows...