Path of Exile on Consoles Being Considered

Grinding Gear Games is “definitely thinking about” a console port of the free-to-play hit Path of Exile.

Next week, players will be able to get their hands on the first “mini-expansion” for Grinding Gear Games’ free-to-play action RPG Path of Exile. Titled Sacrifice of the Vaal. The content update includes new skills, items, customization, enemies, and areas.

The story of the expansion is the resurrection of Queen Atziri of the Vaal civilization, introducing a corruption across the continent of Wraeclast. Players must send Atziri back to the underworld and bring the corruption under control.

I got a chance to sit down with Technical Director Jonathan Rogers as he walked me through the new features in the game, including a sneak peek at the new end-game bosses.

Grinding Gear Games plans to release patch updates roughly every two weeks, with mini-expansions coming every 4 months. Given that ambitious rollout of content, I asked about the monthly user base. Rogers said, “…many, many hundreds of thousands. We’re up to 5 million accounts. We’ve had huge amount of interest…It’s been really good!”

Free-to-play games don’t only have a home on PCs and mobile devices. There is the possibility the RPG could eventually come to Xbox One and Playstation 4. Rogers said Grinding Gear is, “Definitely thinking about it…There are certain skills that just wouldn’t cross over. Like, for example, in this game you can target any place on the screen and you just couldn’t do that with a controller…UI wise it is hard. But we are definitely thinking about [it]. It wouldn’t be surprising if one day we were to announce something like that.”

For now though, it is strictly for PC gamers. You can download Path of Exile for free on its website and Sacrifice of the Vaal will be available on March 5th, 2014.