Surely it’s just a matter of time?
Ever since Xbox acquired Blizzard a few years ago, we’ve constantly questioned why they haven’t decided to bring World of Warcraft to consoles, but it looks like that might actually be about to change in the not too distant future.
Following yesterday’s announcements at Blizzcon 2026, people in attendance were able to go and check out the new World of Warcraft: Forever game for themselves, and they were greeted by a new “gamepad option” that was described as being in an “alpha state” – with the team looking for feedback on it.
Here’s a glimpse at the poster that people saw, along with various in-game views as well:
Speaking to ScreenRant as part of the event, a couple of team members explained that World of Warcraft: Forever will definitely have Xbox controller support (on PC) at launch this year, but that there are “a lot of design questions to ask” when it comes to adding controller support to the “Retail” version of World of Warcraft in particular.
However, they did highlight that Retail kind of already has controller support using add-ons:
“So Retail does sort of have controller support using add-ons. Official out-of-the-box support is something we’re super excited to add in Forever. Never say never for features like that [for Retail]. I think there are a lot of design questions to ask when you look at Modern World of Warcraft compared to Classic or Forever, just with the amount of key binds. But again, I think that the benefits you get from accessibility are obvious here. So we’re going to pay a lot of close attention to how people react to the out-of-the-box controller support for Forever.”
In other words, should World of Warcraft find its way to console in the not too distant future, it’s probably going be in the form of WoW: Forever and/or Classic, while the Retail version might take a little longer to surface.
No announcements have been made at all about a console version for World of Warcraft just yet, but considering they’re putting so much effort into adding Xbox controller support, surely it’s just a matter of time. Fingers crossed!
We’ll leave you with a closer look at yesterday’s announcement of World of Warcraft: Forever down below.
Would you want to play World of Warcraft on console? Let us know in the comments section.
Fraser is the News Editor at Pure Xbox, where he spends his time reporting on the biggest stories in the world of Xbox and beyond.
