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games.macnn.com has posted an interview with Blizzard Entertainment's Brian Love on the soon to be released Diablo II: Lord of Destruction Expansion Pack. According to the interview, the expansion pack is feature-complete and entering the debugging stage. So what about the Mac version? Brian has some interesting things to say regarding the truth behind the hard decisions companies must make when they commit to cross-platform development:

MacNN: How far behind the PC version is the Mac version of Lord of Destruction?

Brian Love: About 2 hours. It takes about 2 hours to do a Mac compile after we get a new PC version.

MacNN: Why will the Mac version of Lord of Destruction be delayed from the PC version?

Brian Love: Basically, it's a case of managing expectations. The problem isn't on the programming; it's on the quality assurance and the operations. As you know, it's always been our goal since doing Mac development to bring out the Mac version as soon as possible. Unfortunately, there remains the painful reality that we're going to sell ten to hundred times more copies on the PC as on the Mac. So, if it comes down to the wire, it may be up to a 30 day delay in the operations as far as getting the logistics of pressing the CD's, making sure that the game is running acceptably on both platforms, making sure that it's available in all of the different languages that we plan on having for the initial release, etc.

Diablo II: Lord of Destruction Web Site

Blizzard Web Site

Brian Love Interview at games.macnn.com

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Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (add to watch list)

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