If there’s any Blizzard franchise that could be easily ported to a console it has to be Diablo. The game is as wonderfully simple as it is delightful, which is probably why so many people are playing Diablo II this long after its release.

Apparently Blizzard isn’t opposed to that idea, either. Geoff Keighley’s Twitter page paraphrases Blizzard’s Paul Sams as saying the company (Blizzard) hasn’t ruled out consoles for the new dungeon masher. In fact, they’re already talking to first parties (which I’m assuming means Microsoft/Sony – that should sufficiently boil Kotick’s blood).

We also still aren’t clear on a release date for Diablo 3. While Blizzard has said that SC2 and WoW: Cataclysm will be their only releases in 2010, that doesn’t completely rule out a 2009 release. 2011 seems a bit more likely, but that’s a lot of wait for a game that, frankly, doesn’t really push the boundaries. Sure, Diablo II was my go-to game for a couple years there, but there are plenty of other releases I’m more excited about in the next year or so, some of them even Blizzard titles.