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Square's Next MMOG For PS3/Windows
Gamespot reports that Square/Enix's next Massively Multiplayer Online Game will be a PS3/Windows Vista title. From the article: "While talking up Treasures of Aht Urhgan--the game's latest expansion--FFXI producer Hiromichi Tanaka commented that his team is now working on a new massively multiplayer online role-playing game for Windows Vista and the PlayStation 3. He also shared his thoughts on porting games to new hardware, including bringing FFXI to the PS3 as well as the PlayStation Portable." More details are likely at E3. Update: 04/20 14:03 GMT by Z : Link fixed.
link to article: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6147946.html
Oddly enough the article http://www.gamespot.com/news/6147946.html says "The Xbox 360 operating system shares enough similarities with Windows, he said, so that porting the Windows version of FFXI to the 360 was a fairly quick task. A PS3 version of FFXI, on the other hand, would require redeveloping the game almost from scratch, a process that Tanaka estimated would take two or three years."
Which is virtually the opposite. So why are they annoucing it for the PS3 then saying it could take a few extra years to get on the PS3. A few years time between PC launch and PS3 launch would be death to the PS3 launch. Rather pointless really.
FFXI did very well for a MMO, prior to WoW and Lin2 it was the 2nd best selling MMO of all time and is still number 4 at 650,000. Likewise they still are turning a huge profit, enough of one that their Japanese players got a second strategy based MMO called Fantasy Earth not long after, though SE wont release it here cause there is little market for a strategy based MMO in their opinions on the NA market.
EQ isn't even close in the number of people they had at the most popular, and that was considered the "to beat" game for years in the MMO circle.
People want MMO's on the smaller systems. All of them sept Gamecube can accept keyboards and the controller is remarkably good in player movement, much better than the mouse or keys are, especially when you consider its not a FPS that requires precision just movement of character/camera. If Blizzard could have gotten their head out of their asses they would have known this, but then the company cant even get Ghost out, and from all indications have no interest in the market, only in the PC/Mac market.
If SE can put out a game similar to FFXI that works with the hard-cores, while keeping in the improvements they made in the last year in updates/new expansion that caters to the casuals with easy XP, solo and small group (3-4) oriented content AND put it out for the PS3/360/Vista, they will have a goldmine by the time it comes out, unless Blizzard can get their act together and see that computer gaming is on its way out.
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Because being #4 means no one plays it...