World of Warcraft isn't coming to consoles any time soon, says the MMO royalty's senior director.
Of course, WoW has been a PC-only MMO since the very beginning in 2004, defying genre conventions that have emerged in the decades since and brought the biggest MMOs, like Final Fantasy 14 and Elder Scrolls Online, to PlayStation and Xbox, mainly.
That hasn't stopped rumors and speculation from circulating over the years, and with the game's eleventh expansion, Midnight, due out next year, there's been some discussion about whether now's the time for the leap to consoles. The game's senior director, Ion Hazzikostas, shuts that idea down in a recent appearance on the Unshackled Fury podcast (via Windows Central).
Asked whether Midnight's controversial changes to class design, largely centered around visual clarity and accessibility, are priming WoW for a console launch, Hazzikostas said very clearly, "It is not."
"To be fully transparent, there is no reason for us to hide anything about this," Hazzikostas said. "If we were actively working towards bringing World of Warcraft to consoles or a bunch of other platforms, we'd be saying: 'we're actively working towards this. We have a lot of work to do but it's a place where we want to land.' Our focus remains on the PC-based experience."
Hazzikostas makes a strong argument. I see little incentive for Blizzard to keep a potential console launch a secret, but at the same time, no game developer or publisher ever would confirm such a massive development before the scheduled announcement. My point being, if WoW is gearing up for a console release, and Blizzard's planning to reveal it later this year, there's also zero incentive for it to confirm speculation ahead of that reveal. Still, Hazzikostas' words leave little room for interpretation, meaning console players waiting for WoW to come their way should probably go ahead and stop holding their breath.
See where WoW ranked on our list of the best MMOs to play in 2025.
