Microsoft Feels “Bad” About its Failure with MMOs

True Fantasy Live Online and Marvel Universe Online have something in common aside from wanting their title to convey the fact that they are (or were, at least) online — both games were MMOs being published by Microsoft that were ultimately canceled. Microsoft Game Studios clearly has had a death touch of sorts when it comes to MMOs, which is a subject former MGS general manager turned corporate VP Shane Kim discussed with Edge recently.

“I’ll admit MGS has not had success in the MMO space, and that happened under my leadership, so I take full responsibility,” he said. “It’s a tough and challenging space that’s evolving all the time – a lot of shifting sands. We haven’t been able to crack the code.”

Given that Microsoft has clearly been the most aggressive in the online space of the three console manufacturers, it seems pretty backwards that they’ve been so unable to get an MMO to the market.

Kim continued, “Game development is hard enough as it is – in the MMO space you’re talking an even bigger investment, basically double. So it does add that layer of complexity – we just haven’t found that right mix.

“…I think we’ve made the right decision not to proceed with those things like the Marvel MMO. And that’s tough, both for customers looking forward to it and teams working on it. That said, we haven’t been successful, but there’s nothing to say those titles can’t be successful on 360.”

Final Fantasy XI is one of the few MMOs available on the system which, don’t forget, has the critical flaw of not having a standard hard drive included with each console.

“There’s a lot of ongoing work,” Kim said. “I think those are real challenges, and I know that our third-party folks want to enable all kinds of content and we work very hard to create a stable and secure environment on Xbox 360 and that’s where you see that tension. I’m sure we can solve that problem though in a way that is good for MMO developers and customers because we want that content: and we’re getting very close. But we’re late with that, and we feel bad about that.”

Until they prove otherwise, I’d recommend this: don’t get too attached to any MMOs you see coming out of Microsoft. I was looking forward to True Fantasy back when it was poised to be release on Xbox 1, so imagine my disappointment when I found out that was disappointed… and then had it happen again to Marvel.