Blizzard snubs Nvidia with Diablo 3

Explain to me again, why is this a snub? It looks like Blizzard just chose a set of features and technologies that are pretty common place. XP and Vista? Makes perfect sense if they want a large user base. DX10.1? Who cares? The userbase of DX10 is pretty small, I can imagine DX10.1 won't even be consequental anytime nVidia has its own card that can run it. As for Havok, it's been the physics engine of choice for years, and Blizzard likes using well established game libraries like Smacker/Miles/etc. Just because Intel bought it up in the last month or so doesn't mean using it is an anti-nVidia statement.

"you don't even need a PC"


Really? Well what do you need then, because there is no "Apple hardware" anymore ;)

And who sells cards to Apple for their macs? Well ATI/AMD of course. And who sells them processors? Well that would be Intel. Havok being bought by Intel and adopted by AMD, this all makes sense. Why wouldn't it be released for Mac? And why wouldn't the goblins be smashed with a big hammer? Blizzard will profit greatly on this new venture. Kudos to you, oh slayer of goblins!

I trust Blizzard to do well on this title. I have bought and played all Diablo titles up to date, and will undoubtedly buy and play the upcoming opus with boundless delight.
Blizzard is synonymous for When It's Done development of highest quality, running fluidly on hardware from the previous generation.
Blizzard is also the best lone development house on the planet, not having been bought out by EA which taints all its products and suppliers with the touch of death.
Diablo 3 may not be original in any way, but it will be a finely-tuned, deep, rich and engrossing experience for those who like the genre, and I wager it'll bring in loads of well-earned moolah to the outfit.

After viewing Diablo 3 trailers i was fired up and ready to revisit diablo 2.

I found all my CDs but couldnt find a cd key for diablo 2 (but have expansion key).. So i figure its only £10 ill buy it online and away i go.

Purchased online via blizzard store. Waited 14 hours for a verification email (apparently even though they have taken my money they have to verify my email before i can download MY game but they will happily give u the cd key before verification... 

Ok so im finally verified, i goto download diablo 2 and its NOT AVAILABLE for download.... It reads "(Diablo II downloads will be made available soon)"

WAIT JUST ONE MINUTE:
a quote from their diablo 2 shop page "Digital products are immediately available upon purchase."

WTF so i call billing support and after 30 minutes on the phone i am cut off. Now everytime i call it says customers are experiencing long waiting times (NO Sugar Sherlock) and i cannot be placed in the queue... WTF i was in the QUEUE when u dumped me out.

An EXTREMELY IRATE Blizzard customer.


Blizzard games have always targetted versions of DirectX that could be expected to be installed on their customers' machines. I well remember that Starcraft and the original Diablo were two of the very few games which would run on Windows NT 4.0, with its unpatchable, a-bit-more-than-3-but-less-than-5 version of DirectX. WoW requires DirectX 9.0c, but this is available as a download for Windows 2000 (which is supported).

I would expect that the situation is that they might use the hardware support in DX10.1 for some features if available, but not require them.

The other record Blizzard has the time from announcement to actual release of title. There is still a slim chance Nvidia can get DX10.1 cards out before the actual release of Diablo 3 but I thought Nvidia said they'll skip DX10.1 entirely. Plus we can also hope to see how the drama with Ubisoft's Assassin Creed finally play out.

Nvidia might also be able to get DX11 cards out but Microsoft won't be hold the first public conference until 2 months from now. Not sure how long Nvidia has been working on DX11 (or DX10.1 for that matter) parts internally though.

Havok physics is the more certain thing that isn't good for Nvidia.

Excuse me, but aren't Macs just a PC in fancy clothes these days?

And is there that much difference between DirectX 10 and 10.1?

Maybe it's just me but isn't it a little odd for Blizzard, who has always been big on releasing their stuff on PC and Mac at the same time, to go with an api that's sapposed to only look it's best on the smallest subgroup of windows PC's? 

Seriously besides the fact the game will almost assuredly be worthless given:

1. Basically everyone involved with the series to date has left the company due to "creative differences".

2. It's graphics engine appears to be a fairly bad variant of the WoW engine that lacks the dark nature or artistic quality of the Diablo engines to date.

3. They basically wrote the story into a dead end with Diablo II and it's expanison.

4. The two characters types shown to date are drastically over powered rehashes of character types from Diablo II so there is no challange what so ever.

Anyway back to the point isn't it a little strange for them to choose an api that only works 100% on Vista and doesn't even begin to work on the Mac OS? Personally I say they would have been far better off waiting til the OpenGL 3.0 standard was done since once finished along with it updates it will do everyone DX10 will but on windows XP and non-windows OS's then use it to make a completely new engine so they don't slammed by fans for making a subpar sequel to a once great series that plays favorites to an OS no gamer really wants to use.

Good grief. What the hell is wrong with you people? How the hell is this a snub? Look... we get it... Nvidia doesn't like The INQ... and that makes the boys at The INQ very sad, but is all this really necessary?

Where in the FAQ did you find DirectX 10 being recommended?

I don't remember hearing the developer say it will ship with DX10.1 @ Blizzard invitational in Paris.

I would say that since OpenGL has begin around, Blizzard has never used Direct X. Why should they switch to a new technology that makes it difficult to port the game to mac? Especially, since the younger generations are switching to mac in ever larger numbers.

@ Tim 
I don't get it, diablo 1 was a complete "click as fast as you can" experience & guess what? so was diablo 2!!

diablo is not a clever game, its a fast paced button smashing experience. It has cool effects, awesome movies & little variation.

No intricate plots, no complex choices & no intelligence required.

If you had a long day at work & your significant other is busting your nuts...you would probably want to come home & click virtual monsters into virtual pulp until your caveman fit ends. (takes a few hours)

And that my friend is the appeal of diablo.
You think the original people that made the series cannot be replaced? you think no one can do a better job?
With Blizzard's budget, believe me, many people can.

So the character types...those were never important. The idea is to create variation...the variation itself can be really crude and simplistic, allowing young button smashers to be successful at playing the game.

Plot? what plot? the plot never made sense what so ever & no one really cared because the movies were friggin awesome.

At the end of the day, Blizzard could make the main character a chicken hunter that is off to kill the resurrected skeleton of diablo's dog & that would work for everyone as long as the movies are as awesome, the sound is the same & you get to stress test your left click & potion shortcut keys through thousands of enemies.

Oh & have shiny things in the middle, fire, spells & magic items.

Not a snub considering ATI and Blizzard are in bed... Pretty sure your old compatriot over at fudzilla mentioned this already. (http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8036&Itemid=1).

So um yeah way to pop off old news as something fresh. To top it off DX10.1 is made way to big a deal of since most gamers are still on XP. Until Windows 7 this really is moot. The press gave Vista such excessively terrible buzz and it still has massive overall requirements for a fluid experience that most people won't touch it.

Its about time you guys stopped talking about DX10 iterations when you are consistently bashing the only OS that runs it.

On the Mac question Blizz has made it very clear that they want to support that Mac as a gaming platform so thats nothing to worry about. You probably don't remember but before Havok was acquired by Intel; they had a deal to do GPU physics with ATI (and that was 2 years ago).

No, Macs aren't PC fancily dressed. They run OS X, which is the point of buying a Mac (getting away from Windows), outside of support for the entire package under one roof (hardware and software), iLife, free face to face support at an Apple Store, etc... Games have to be created differently for this operating system. Yes, it is easier these days, but it is still a very different environment to code for. 

And for the few top shelf games that do not have a Mac derivatives, you can just use BootCamp: Which runs Windows extremely well with full use of all hardware.

Watched a trailer of it and it is a button masher if I ever seen one. Like Diablo II it looks to have even bigger hordes of monsters and you click the crap out them. Ho Hum, not for me at all. The young kiddies will eat it up though.
I'll take Starcraft II instead.

I was under the impression (and could be mistaken) that DX10.1 was basically graphically identical to DX10, and just added some audio features. And to whoever has not faith it won't be reminiscent of the originals...that 20 min game play video looked a hell of a lot like the D2 experience I've come to know and love.

This game will sell heaps of video cards. I have seen so many people commenting that they are going to need to upgrade their PC (or buy a new one) now because they want to play Diablo 3 and otherwise haven't played many PC games, so their system hasn't been upgraded in years.

Um you can buy nVidia boards for Mac too. It's not a conspiracy. Game developers will move to 10.1 naturally. AMD has two generations of 10.1 cards out now at various price ranges, nVidia has zero. Just the facts ma'am.

WTH?
At the time Diablo 3 will be released (not before 2010 I guess), Nvidia will probably have DX 11 or even DX 12 cards available, so who cares if this title uses DX 10 or DX 10.1 ?
Have you never experienced Blizzards "when its done" philosophy? High system requirements or cutting edge technology have never a problem for Blizzards customers.
Moreover, quite some Macs are equipped with a nvidia gpu, so how can this be a snub?
Looks like another of these childish rants about NV by the Inq...

Blizzard is not the same, most of them left. I doubt WoW still have 2mil+ active accounts. 

I guess i can play Diablo 3 on my iPod since it doesnt need PC.

Blizzard has coded all of the PC ports of its game engines in DirectX/Direct3D, so it's no surprise that Diablo III will be the same. OpenGL is all but dead for PC gaming, so it doesn't make much sense to use it when Blizzard is already capable of creating a single engine that can render well in D3D on PCs and OpenGL on Macs. Blizzard isn't stupid, they know that the best way to sell games is to make them run as best as they can on a wide array of end-user hardware configurations.

What is with all these ignorant idiots claiming that diablo is nothing more than a button mashing game. 

If you ever played Diablo for more than 10 seconds and with a little common sense you may have realised that holding the mouse button down gives the same effect as clicking the mouse 100 times.

Anyways from what we have seen in the demo the graphics for diablo 3 sucks, it is basically what we might have expected from a new warcraft not a new diablo. they need to make it alot darker and grittier asap. 

ever heard of shadows??? what has happened to the classic light radius of d1 & d2????

I wonder what version of Directx the demos were done with? The graphics didn't look all that great. I think Titan Quest looks better, and I am/was a huge Diablo 1/2 (expansions) fan. Of course you can't really know how it's going to look until you get it running 1280x1024 on your box.

Diablo III as developed and demonstrated is DX9 based and thus works fine on XP, Vista, and the major GPU families that support DX9.

The Mac version is OpenGL 2.x based and similarly runs on many kinds of GPU.


Terrible article. DX10.1 is the best game experience? 10.1 does nothing, I repeat again, nothing, that anyone really cares about. Are you even a gamer for christ sake? You should have already known that. Also, I guess you missed the memo, but like, um...yeah a MAC is a PC...it just costs more. Try harder.

Bull's *hit.
Games from Blizzard always optimized

I think this comment from Jay Wilson sums up Blizzard's official stance on what their vision is for the System Requirements and Platform specs for Diablo 3:

"Jay Wilson: Currently we have no plans for specific DirectX 10 support. Right now are running a DirectX 9, and we run on a pretty broad range of systems, really fast. Overall, across-the-board Blizzard's goal is that all of our games support a broad range of systems. We don't jump up the system specs in any grand way. We have no intentions of being a high-end game, and certainly no intentions of being an exclusive DirectX 10 game at this time..."

a lot of the new high end games require pixel and vertex shader v 3.0. will D3 be one of those kind of games? if so, i need to shop for a new Graphics Card.

(kinda late to comment, sorry)