Stay a while and listen.... Blizzard fanboys demonstrate their staggering sense of entitlement yet again.

The announcement of Playstation versions of Diablo III has been met with typical bile by the Blizzard community, the thrust their disapproval seeming to stem from an assumption that the game's perceived shortcomings are due to it being designed with consoles in mind from the start. Furthermore, there seem to be some who believe such compromises are as a direct result of Activision's influence on the company.

I loved the PC version of Diablo III released last year almost without reservation. I'll concede that some of the criticisms made by the community where valid - the need use the auction house to acquire the gear to tackle the higher difficulty settings that somewhat undermined the tempo of the game, for example, or the odd choice to reduce the maximum party size from the eight found in Diablo II to four. I found the play experience so hugely entertaining that I was able to put such misgivings out of my mind, however, and had a whale of a time in so doing. The only reason I'm not still playing is because I've got bored of the content currently on offer. Rest assured, however, that I'll be back into the fray as soon as the inevitable expansion drops. 

Nobody at Blizzard has said anything that has even implied that Diablo III was designed with console versions in mind. I think the decision to take conscious steps to make Diablo more accessible to a wider audience is as a result of the video game industry's, and Blizzard's, exponential growth since the release of Diablo II. If Blizzard concern themselves only with fan service they'll crash and burn, now matter how full their coffers are from countless years of World of Warcraft subscriptions. If commercial decisions and compromises were made, I don't think they hurt the end product at all. 

Blizzard frequently attracts the worst kind of fans; those have become so utterly engrossed in the object of their affections that they lash out when it strays even slightly from their idealized vision of what it should be. Hop on over to the Diablo forums and take a peek at the Playstation-related threads and you'll see conclusive proof, if proof where needed, that familiarity breeds the worst kind of contempt.