With the cost of PC games continuing to incline, and Activision's PC version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 the equivalent of $80 USD within Europe, it's also certainly possible that Diablo III (published by Activision Blizzard) will end up sharing a higher price than any previous game in the series, before you take the microtransactions, DLC and expansion packs into account. More concerning for the end user is the game's retail price. While I don't know just how much money Diablo III cost to make, I can bet that it's in excess of most titles on the market these days - it has been in development at least on and off over the course of ten years, after all. These days, games can be expensive: both to buy, and to make.
and I feel that it's left me behind, as well. Although it's still very much the biggest and, arguably, best of hack and slash action-RPGs, I feel very much that Diablo's legacy has, in many ways, outgrown the relatively rigid confines and small scope which in so many ways defined it in the first place. A long-awaited closed beta test has come and is now old news amongst players, and Blizzard's fanbase are eagerly awaiting the release of a more public demo and other tastes of the game, though of course, it's unlikely that the hype surrounding the game will be satiated until well after its release early next year.Īs much as Diablo is a genre-defining series and, in some senses, the ultimate in accessible PC-oriented action-RPGs, even with the much-awaited Diablo III on the horizon, I've found myself asking a number of questions concerning economics and value, the game's online-only focus, and other design decisions, which really make me question not only how relevant Diablo is to RPGs anymore, but, on a more personal level, to me as well. Although it's been years since we've had a new Diablo game, with all the dungeon-crawling, loot-grabbing, monster-slaying action that fans have been in love with for over a decade now (hard to believe, isn't it?), today we find ourselves just a few short months away from Diablo III's release.
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