Turbine to focus on console MMO

Where I wrote that Activision Blizzard will pass by console, Turbine is looking to do the exact opposite! Craig Alexander, Turbine´s vice president of product developmment states that the MMO´s revolutionized the PC as  a gaming platform and it is going to do the same for consoles.

From the first MUD Shadow of Yserbius to the 12 million subscriptions World of Warcraft has today, the MMO market on the PC represents almost the entire growth of the PC as a gaming platform. The MMO’s competed with everything available on PC’s at that time and Alexander tells us it is going to do exactly the same for the console.

There are a few problems with their plans; one of them being the difficulty of developing on the PS3, opposed to developing for the Xbox360, so Alexander says developers should develop for the PS3 and then port  to the Xbox360, which is suppossed to be a lot easier! He publishes a great list of problems on his slides, which you’ll find in the gallery below. But the other would be the following: For the PC, you would only pay a monthly fee to play the game, for the Xbox you would pay a fee for Xbox Live and then also for the game. Casual player will say it’s too expensive, while hardcore players will have a PC game for sure.

I’m convinced consoles will remain a big part of gaming, but the MMO market will probably stay best, played at the PC with a full keyboard and all its options.