NCsoft on MMOs – Shift to Consoles “Inevitable”
By Shawn on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 5:07 PM PST In Game Companies, Game Consoles, Gamer Life, Games, Games Industry, NCsoft
Chris Chung president of NCsoft North America has stated that MMOs shifting to consoles is “inevitable.”
In an interview with GameDaily, Chung talks about NCSoft’s new MMOs Exteel and Aion. He addresses the difficulties with developing games that can successfully cross over between Korean and North American markets.
“If you look across the entertainment market, there are very few things that can appeal across the whole world. There are cultural barriers that prevent this, and game development culture is no different. I really applaud World of Warcraft for being successful, but that is few and far between. They somehow have the ‘mojo’ and we’re looking to see how we could create a global property with a similar sort of appeal.”
He also talks about NCsoft’s exclusive deal with Sony, emphasizing that PC MMOs have to be optimized for the shift to consoles.
“I think there are a lot of causes that factor into good MMOs on a console,” Chang ventured. “These are elements like ‘does the person have a standard definition TV or an HDTV?’ You don’t have a good a resolution on regular TV, and a lot of games were hurting for that. Ultimately, we have to really optimize for consoles; we have to create an experience that’s suited for the [PS3] and supports the MMO element. I think the shift is inevitable; real-time strategy is one of the last PC genres moving onto consoles, and I think we’ll see a similar trend for online games as well.”
via GameDaily
I wouldn’t play NCsoft’s grindcore games on any system…. But this perhaps is a smart move for Sony. If anything it would be interesting to see how they could link it with Home.