Irvine-based Blizzard Entertainment Inc. will make one of its games available for consoles for the first time under a recent deal with Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
The company agreed to release Diablo III for Sony’s PlayStation console, which displays the game through television.
The announcement came at a launch event in New York for Sony’s PlayStation 4, which will be released later this year.
Blizzard will make Diablo III available on the current version of the console—PlayStation 3—next month.
The debut with Sony is timed for the Pax East conference in Boston, a major industry event where gamers and company watchers will get the first look at Diablo’s new interface, controls and camera angles.
Diablo costs about $60 for software that gamers either buy in a package or via download to play on a computer. The price is expected to be about the same to get the game on PlayStation consoles.
Blizzard and Sony did not offer financial details of their agreement.
The online version of Diablo III, released in May, sold 3.5 million copies in its first 24 hours on the market, breaking the record for the fastest-selling PC game. The previous record of 3.3 million was held by World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, also a Blizzard title.
Diablo III also beat Cataclysm’s record for a first month of sales, with about 5 million copies. Diablo III went on to sell some 12 million copies for all of 2012, raking in more than $720 million in revenue.
Blizzard has been planning to make games available for consoles for some time, Chris Metzen, a senior vice president for story and franchise development, told the audience at the PlayStation 4 event in New York. He said Diablo III was chosen because its game play was well suited for consoles.
Return
The game’s release marks a return to the console format for Blizzard’s top-level executives.
A predecessor company called Silicon & Synapse, launched by Blizzard cofounders Mike Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce—released The Lost Vikings in 1992 for the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System. They followed that up with Rock N’ Roll Racing a year later.
The company eventually became Blizzard Entertainment, which zeroed in on online distribution.
Blizzard executives offered no further comments on the deal with Sony.
It will bear watching if Diablo III can continue its strong sales with consoles, or whether Blizzard will make other games available on PlayStation.
“Will console gamers that don’t know the franchise shell out $60 to play the already released game later this year?” asked a recent blog post on investor website Seeking Alpha.
Roles
Diablo III players adopt a role such as barbarian, witch doctor, wizard, monk or demon hunter and fight evil forces in a labyrinth of supernatural encounters and settings.
The game, in a new twist, features an auction house that allows players to trade objects for real cash.
The partnership with Sony opens up an established distribution channel for Blizzard and gives PlayStation new content to offer customers amid fierce competition in the console market.
Sony trails Microsoft’s Xbox and Nintendo’s Wii consoles on sales. Microsoft has been rumored to be preparing for the introduction of a new Xbox version later this year.
Blizzard, a unit of Santa Monica-based parent Activision, itself part of Paris-based Vivendi SA, is the largest software maker in Orange County.
The company posted sales of $1.6 billion in 2012, up 29% from 2011. Operating income topped $717 million, up 45%.
The company released two games last year, including World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, as well as Diablo III.
Most of its games cost $40 to $60. World of Warcraft sells for about $40 and charges gamers around $15 a month to play online.
