True Fantasy Live Online Cancelled

Sad Gamer writes "Well, it seems long-awaited Xbox Live-compatible MMORPG True Fantasy Live Online has been cancelled. Apparently: 'The main reason cited for this action was the inability to deliver the intended experience to users of Microsoft's XBox Live service in Japan...' This leaves a tiny list of titles that left that can help to push XBox Live in Japan. 'Now Japanese XBox Live users only have titles like Halo 2 and Dead or Alive Ultimate to look forward to in the upcoming months.'" GameSpot has a full translation of the brief Microsoft Japan press release regarding this previously discussed, Level 5 created MMO, formerly likely for Western release as well, which notes: "The MMORPG genre, across all platforms, has become an incredibly crowded and competitive marketplace. In response, Microsoft Game Studios has decided to streamline its portfolio, making fewer bets in this genre."

Comments

Re:Filthy Pus-sicles

[schild]

What are you babbling about? There, Inc. has all but disappeared and they weren't even in the same class. One was going to be a cel-shaded Everquest-esque MMORPG and the other was a social experiment that barely classified as a game but more as a virtual world. People are jumping into the MMO genre because it's new (read: the wave of the future) and there's a lot to be said for player retention in these types of games. Unfortunately very few people know how to make them right. What has happened here is Microsoft has decided to put all their eggs in Brad McQuaid's (and the rest of the Vanguard team's) basket and hoping he can turn out his second Everquest. Most likely this will result in crap of the highest level. But it's their choice. They have the money to toss around on shit like this. That said, I don't know where you get the idea "tons" of MMO's will flood the market. MMORPG's haven't even truly broken into the mainstream yet considering how many gamers there are out there. On top of that they cost an incredible amount of money to produce, execute, and maintain. One day someone will do it right, but until then, it's not oversaturation we have to worry about, it's the deluge of shitty games that we've seen thus far. One last thing, $60 box and $10 a month? You obviously do not play MMO's or games for that matter. Besides the Star Wars Galaxies limited edition box + digital sunglasses, I haven't seen a $60 since Final Fantasy II (IV) came out for the Super Nintendo. As for the monthly price Star Wars, Lineage 2, and City of Heroes has upped the standard to $15 a month. That's $70 more than $10/month per year. That's a hefty freaking difference. Please, don't talk again, ever again.

unique features?

[Lord_Dweomer]

You know, in my brief look over of the game, I failed to see any unique features that would make it competitive in the MMORPG market. Perhaps someone can point some out to me.

Seriously, nothing pisses me off more than seeing some new cookie cutter MMORPG come out with zero new features just trying to capitalize on an existing franchise or powerhouse marketing.

Re:unique features?

[bugbread]

The obvious one is that it's a MMORPG for the XBox, which would make it unique. Since some people prefer to play games on their consoles, for better or worse, this would be a big deal for them.

As for playing TFLO on a PC, I agree with you completely.

Re:unique features?

[Zonk]

The XBox component would have made it unique. I know that I would have liked to try a MMOG via XBox live.

It would also have been the first MMOG to natively and ubiquitously support voicechat.

I think MS has made a mistake in ditching the MMOG market. It may be getting crowded, but the propertie s they were creating had features that set themselves apart from the crowd in interesting ways.

Mythica and TFL would have been cool games. A combined 5 or 6 years of dev time, flushed down the drain because Microsoft got twitchy about the market.

My hope is that MS will try to recoup it's losses by selling the properties to other development companies, but I kind of doubt that will happen.

Microsoft's really good . . .

[superultra]

. . . at canceling these days. Talk about Japan not having any titles? What does that leave in Microsoft's pocket for the US after Fable and Halo 2? Mechassault 2? Citizen Zero, another MMORPG that has been in development for two years and will most likely get canceled as well? Ooo. My guess is that anyone working for MS right now, either first or second party, has sent out more than a few resumes in the last few weeks and is all but waiting for The Email. Unless they're Bungie and (ironically) Rare.

Which reminds me. Need proof of in house politics at MS? Note that none of Rare's wholly unimpressive games have been canceled. -cough-PeterMoore-cough-.

I hadn't seen True Fantasy firsthand, but I will say that the fact that you didn't have to fight at all seemed rather interesting. It's nothing new, but it seemed to be a focus rather than an afterthought. Fishing sounded cool, is all. And, it was by the team that did Dark Cloud 2, which was excellent. Oh well.

Re:Microsoft's really good . . .

[blueZhift]

You can say that again! But in this particular case, while I'm disappointed, I'm not surprised. And it is probably a good business decision. While I'm sure MS is aching to crack the Japanese market, True Fantasy Online had virtually no chance of success. There's too much strong competition now. Final Fantasy XI Online has been very successful on PC and the PS2 leaving no room for another MMORPG on the console.

Hopefully all of the hard work Level 5 put into the game can be recycled into a decent offline RPG for Japanese XBox users at least. Politics definitely has some part in MS decisions. With respect to the failure of the XBox in Japan, I would say that the biggest problem is that they just haven't made the XBox Japanese enough in that market. It probably isn't easy, but they should at least be able to emulate Sony and Nintendo to get some traction there.

At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if XBox 2 never sees the light of day.

Re:Is anyone surprised?

[Lynxara]

I imagine it would have still been called "True Fantasy Online". A remarkably high number of Japanese games have names that are English phrases, and are sometimes even written with roman letters rather than the Japanese phonetic alphabet. Giving your game a title that uses words in a popular foreign language (like English, French, or German) is something that Japanese consumers seem to find stylish.

Well this sucks.

[AzraelKans]

Sometimes events like this remind me that MS actually has no experience in gamedev only in business, fantasy whatever online wasnt such a bad idea simply because there are no other MMORPGs for the xbox.

Of course that game was not going to work in Japan, final fantasy its an institution there and the game its more than a tad similar to it, but thats not all, most of the audience in Japan is tech savy and perfectly capable of using other more mature (although more complex) games like WOW , FFXI or EQ2, the only way to market this game was to offer it to total non gamers who wanted to learn about online playing and MMORPG basics. Its a shame MS didnt saw that and instead tried to xerox copy FFXI to the book.

Well that leaves a HUGE niche for an Xbox live rpg , who would take the call now? bioware? dare I say Blizzard? (hey! I can dream at least). Anyway chances are the answer is "no one" and we will have to wait until xbox2 (xbox-j) arrives. so as stated: this sucks.

[rant]
If you are wondering why no project of Rare has been cancelled, Its simple, MS knows RARE has tons of industry experience and they dont. So they let them have their way even when they dont fully understand what they are doing.
Thats not the case with the rest of their teams (except bungie) since they are oftenly almost as unexperienced as MS.

Sometimes this backfires as proved in "grabbed by the ghoulies" which was mostly a failed gameplay experiment but wait til you see what they did with "conker reloaded" after seing the e3 trailer my confidence in them has been recovered, lets hope it lives up to expectations.
[/rant]

Well poo

[XellDx]

There goes the sole reason I wanted Xbox live.
Seriously though, this shows if anything how immature in the Industry microsoft actually is. They've been hyping this game for almost 3 years now. I mean, this was a major presentation at last years E3. I won't say that I didn't see something like this coming with TFLO being a complete no show this year, but jesus. To cancel the game when it's so close to being finished?

The reason I say it shows immaturity it becuase this game has a fan base in the US and it hasn't been released yet.So of course its being marketed towards Japan first, the land thats completely over saturated with MMORPG's. It might not be as big as MS wants for a MMORPG, but since Xbox live pretty much only cover shooters and sports games right now, they're limiting the subscriber base to people who only want to play those types of games; Games which are intrinsicly[sic?] better played with other humans who can be made fun of face to face. (Granted, there are some exceptions, but those have only recently started to arise). Back on the point about this being launched in Japan, the Xbox is obviously not doing as well as hoped over there. Hello? Mr. Balmer? Can you pay attention and maybe release the game where you have people buying your system? Thanks.

To show this game for as much has been shown and then throw it away suggests that MS is starting to think about how much money they are really losing. Unless Factor 5 has been lying to us and the game was horribly incomplete, this is a very, very bad message.