Diablo 3 has been one of the biggest games of 2013, and the success of the game figures to continue when it is eventually ported to the PlayStation 4. During Blizzcon senior producer of the game Julia Humphreys spoke to IGN at length about the game and the unique features the PlayStation 4 version of Diablo 3 will have.
The Dualshock 4 has several features that Blizzard will take advantage of according to Humphreys, one of which is the touchpad:
"We've been playing around with the touch pad...What the touch pad can be really useful for and really cool for are kind of shortcutting things that you do over and over again. Or maybe even giving you the opportunity to do things that we just didn't have buttons for. One of the things we're investigating right now is we could it for emotes in the game. That's been a popular request from people, because we have emotes on PC but don't have any way to have them really on the PS3, so with the touchpad we can have a little shortcut menu for emotes."
The share button on the Dualshock 4 will also be used for different features of Diablo 3, such as Player Mail and Player Gifts, which Humphreys explained the purpose of:
"Player Mail is pretty much what it sounds like...You can mail an item to a friend on your friends list, so it's pretty straightforward. Player Gifts are kind of a cool twist on that. So, let's say you're out adventuring in the world and you get a Legendary item that drops. There's a small chance that a second Legendary would spawn off of that. So, let's say you and I are playing, it would say 'gift for [your friend] has dropped,' and so once I click on it, it would just go straight to your mailbox. And once you open it, it will roll for your class. It's kind of a way to help share your adventures even if you aren't online at the same time."
Finally, when asked if these features would show up in the Reaper of Souls expansion on the PC, the producer had this to say concerning the new features:
"This is something that's kind of part of the PS4 platform, so that's why we started looking at it. Like any of our features, then the PC team would take a look to see if that makes sense for the game and for their audience."
Look out for Diablo 3 on the PlayStation 4 in 2014 as well as the Reaper of Souls expansion pack.