Throughout its 21 years on the market, World of Warcraft has often been subject to rumors that it would be ported to consoles. A couple of years ago, for the first time, franchise VP Holly Longdale admitted they had been talking to Microsoft about the possibility following the former company's acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
However, World of Warcraft Game Director Ion Hazzikostas has now denied fan theories that some of the accessibility changes coming with the next expansion, Midnight, are geared toward eventually porting the MMORPG to consoles. Answering a question from Jez Corden on the Unshackled Fury podcast, Hazzikostas said:
It is not. To be fully transparent, there's no reason for us to hide anything about this. 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 it. We know we have a lot of work to do, but it's a place where we want to land.' Our focus remains right now on the PC-based experience. I think a lot of these changes, as a package, are about approachability broadly. World of Warcraft is an incredibly complex game. I know there's members of the community who celebrate that complexity, but I think there's a big difference between having a very high skill ceiling in a game, having a tremendous amount of depth, and just having complexity. I think our goal has always been, Blizzard's goals have always been, with all of our games, to have them be easy to learn and nearly impossible to master. And I think a lot of our changes in World of Warcraft Midnight are aimed at improving the easy to learn side of that spectrum.
To be honest, I have played a little of the Midnight Alpha, and the game is still far from being accessible enough to be playable with a gamepad. There are still way too many skills and buttons to press compared to games like Final Fantasy XIV and The Elder Scrolls Online, which were designed from the get-go to be available on consoles. Personally, I believe a truly massive rework would be required to make it truly playable on consoles, and I don't think the studio is entirely sure it would be worth the effort. As such, I doubt it will ever happen.
World of Warcraft: Midnight doesn't have a release date yet, but a rumor suggested it could launch in February 2026. In other Blizzard news, early bird tickets for BlizzCon 2026 will go on sale tomorrow.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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