It was only just this weekend that Blizzard seemed to be not quite sure if it would implement PS Vita Remote Play for PlayStation 4 versions of Diablo 3, but it seems like its leaning towards making it a reality. The Diablo Twitter account posted a photo (seen above) showing Vita Remote Play at work.
"'Will Remote Play on the PS Vita be available for #D3 Ultimate Edition on #PS4?' The answer is yes, and it's awesome!" the tweet said.
Last we checked, there was a bit of a discrepancy between staff over the future of Remote Play. During BlizzCon, Senior Producer Julie Humphreys stated on the matter, "One of the really cool features that comes built-in with the PS4 is this concept of remote play, so you can stream the gameplay that is happening on the PS4 over to your Vita screen. That is something we are looking into...I would say we are in the earliest stages of looking at that. We want to make sure that it is readable and is a good user experience."
However, also during BlizzCon, Senior Level Designer Matthew Berger said that Blizzard had no plans for Remote Play: "The Vita is an amazing piece of kit, but the screen is still smaller," he said. "And when you look at--and also it has its own aspect ratio--and when you look at Diablo III, there's a lot happening on-screen already. You get surrounded by your enemies, lots of effects flying off in every direction. The inventory can be pretty complicated to navigate sometimes when you have lots of items...So it would be a little bit more of stretch. It's kind of percolating in the back of our mind, but we don't really have any plans right now," said Berger.
Whether Blizzard just didn't keep certain staff in the loop or just didn't decide until recently, the decision seems to be set in stone now.
While PS4 players will no doubt be overjoyed by this news, there's some bad news for PC gamers. Blizzard has confirmed that there won't be any controller support for said versions.
Enter again, Matthew Berger, who told Eurogamer that because of a different "rhythm" between the console and PC versions, controller support "wouldn't work" for the PC:
"The rhythm on PC is tactactactactactac - you're clicking the mouse, you're telling your character where to go, the rhythm is very different. It flows more, because you're constantly repositioning your character with the thumbstick; you're really never stationary on console, whereas on PC you're a lot more stationary," he said. "When you're playing on the PC, you're not really looking at your character as much, you're kind of focusing on the cursor. Whereas on console it's the exact opposite, you're drawn in."
"If I let you use the controller on the PC, then I have to let you use the user interface that goes with it, and if I give you the roll and I haven't throttled the number of enemies attacking you because the mouse-and-keyboard players can handle all those enemies, but with a controller you have too many guys," Berger added. "The games have really been structured to take advantage of their environment and their ecosystem, so in the same way it would not be a good fit to put a mouse and keyboard on the console. It wouldn't work."
Diablo 3 arrives on PlayStation 4 with the Reaper of Souls expansion sometime next year as The Ultimate Evil Edition. Currently, Diablo 3 is available on Mac, PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.
