Diablo IV arrives this summer on many platforms – PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series S, and last-gen systems PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. With the very successful beta test weekends this March, fans have already had a chance to try the game and the hype is rising – now many players are wondering which platform to get Diablo IV for when it arrives later this year.
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Which Platform Should you Buy Diablo 4 on? – PC and Console Differences Explained
Although many PC traditionalists will just wave their hands dismissively and say that Diablo MUST be played on PC, as it’s a game where you destroy mice by furiously clicking for hours and shouldn’t be played differently. But, it seems Diablo games have existed on consoles, well, almost forever. The first Diablo was also on the original PlayStation and it was playable, amazingly enough. Diablo II was not initially released for consoles, but recently we got a great remaster that is playable even on Switch, and Diablo III showcased how playing with a controller can even have advantages compared to classic mouse-clicking action. So when the question of where to play Diablo IV arises, it first comes down to controller vs keyboard & mouse.
Diablo 4 – Controller vs Keyboard & Mouse
We’ll start by going back to Diablo III once again, the game that introduced phenomenal gamepad support. Dodging on a button, melee hits that you can feel much more, and moving with an analog stick introduced a much higher level of control and immersion than senseless clicking. This system was so good that PC players wanted such controller support in the PC version of Diablo III as well, but unfortunately, it never happened. However, as Diablo IV has been developed simultaneously for PC and consoles since the beginning, the PC version will have full controller support this time.
“The decision to support controller input on PC is what caused the greater paradigm shift for us. We wanted to give players the ability to switch between the two options freely, so our UI needed to be unified enough that swapping hardware inputs on the fly wouldn’t throw people completely off kilter.” – Angela Del Priore, Diablo 4 Lead Game Designer (via Blizzard Blog).
Related: How to Complete Class Specialization in Diablo 4
This makes the decision of where to play Diablo IV a little bit easier this time, because if you want to play with the mouse, you’ve got the PC version, and if you want to play on a controller, you can choose between the PC and console versions. However, there is another difference besides the control system.
Diablo 4 – Local Co-Op or Online Community
Local Co-Op was added in Diablo III and was great for playing with real-life friends from the couch, and this mode also returns in Diablo IV, but only in the console version – this is definitely a big point for the PlayStation and Xbox versions. On the other hand, the PC version enables much easier interaction with other players online, due to simpler text chat, and the community gathered around the PC version of Diablo games is traditionally always more active, so there it is.
When you take all of this into consideration, we believe you’ll have an easy time deciding where to play Diablo IV when it comes out June 6, 2023, for PC and consoles – next-gen & last-gen PlayStation and Xbox systems, no word on Switch or Mobile versions yet.
