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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.
is there a link to the story?
From the article
huh?
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
- a new video game
- it will be released
- sometime between now and the destruction of the universe
And nobody showed up.
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.
huh?
*ZONK!*
Isn't it time that new MMOs take a different direction? Different types of games brought into a MMO environment seem like they'd do well. Atari's Test Drive Unlimited seems to be headed close to that direction. MMO's can be so much more than slaying dragons and fighting in space.
Wait a second... an MMO on the PSP? Think of the potential for this... Gold farming anywhere, on the go! Lose your job or fail in college while you're actually there now!
Then there's the issue of the reduced battery life when the wi-fi switch is on. Anytime I've wanted to play online with my PSP I've always found myself becoming attached to the nearest wall unit via an umbilical charging cable, which I feel sort of defeats the purpose of a handheld unit. The party mechanics of the game also somewhat dooms the concept to failure, as it can sometimes take an hour to find a good party, and then they'll want to play for no less than two hours. By then, a PSP user's battery would likely be dead... or worse yet, would go dead during a big fight. If there was a way to make the game more playable in 20min-1hr fixes, it'd work. But the 4-5 hour stretches that the game tends to demand? I really don't think that's viable. If I'm going to sit at my desk, chained to the PSP's charging cable, then I'll just play it on my PC.
(From the Laws of Japanese Animation) Law of Inherent Combustibility -- Everything explodes. Everything.
Not sure how it would work out for PS3. Keyboard for MMOGs is pretty much required, especially if the game is action oriented with multiple skills/talents/abilities like City of [Heroes|Villains] or WoW. Sitting in your couch with a keyboard on lap is not the ideal setting to play a MMO where you need to type a lot and use hotkeys. This game probably won't have custom UI like WoW because after 3-4 addons it gobs already 64+ megs of ram. Since PS3 memory is not like a PC, they will be limited in storing data in memory, or swap a lot, meaning lot of time spent zoning, zoning sucks. WoW has shown that is possible to eliminate most zoning vs games like EQ where you constantly zoned from one area to another.
Not to mention the typical console player doesn't really care about MMOs. How many console gamers have high speed internet pipe that is pretty much a requirement for these games?
And finally, if the MMO gets major graphics upgrades, will the PS3 able to handle it 5 years for now. Everquest got a major graphics overhaul, IIRC DAoC also. Pretty sure other games will get major overhauls during their lifetimes.
I think the companies are jumping on the let's do an MMO bandwagon after seeing WoW's huge success, and all this without much thought.
Actually they probably are:
http://www.ffxifestival.com/devpanel.html
During E3 2005 we announced that the FINAL FANTASY XI development team had begun work on a next generation MMORPG for the Xbox 360 and Windows Vista. We can't talk too much about the next generation MMORPG, but we're sure you'll find it very exciting.
... either Square has a dim view of the XBox 360 or.... They're a Sony crew! Square has been tied hard and fast to Sony for many years now, so it's no surprise that they'd focus on that platform first and foremost.
Vista is actually the most logical "second" platform for them to code for since PCs are still the main base for MMOs. Consoles are growing in this area, but they're a very small percentage overall so far. Sony is probably paying Square a pretty penny for the exclusive console rights for the next hot MMO too, it can be used as a selling point for the PS3.
Saying that Square is already giving up on the 360 because their next MMO isn't being primarily developed for it is like saying Blizzard is giving up on the PS3 because they're remaining largely a PC development house. It doesn't make sense.
In all seriousness, though, I hope they make it better than FFXI, which was essentially a tear-your-hair-out collection of aggrevating timesinks. Since quitting, WoW and EQ2 have shown me how fun the MMO genre can actually be without resorting to things like having "very easy" mobs kill you more often than not and instituting a crafting system where you still fail 1/10 of the time on a level 1 item at max skill.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
"Keyboard for MMOGs is pretty much required"
People said the same thing about keyboard and mouse for FPS games a few years ago. While that may be ideal, there are a large number of FPS games on consoles nowadays and most of them play just fine. Just because nobody has figured out a good way to translate MMOG controls to a console controller yet doesn't mean they won't be able to in the future.
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.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
the thing was at fan fest the producer commented on the fact that as of that time, they didnt even know what the PS3 was going to even BE like, since they didnt have a Dev version yet.
It probably will be out for both systems its just they never mentioned it in the second article.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
I had no issues playing Everquest Online Adventures for the PS2 with a keyboard and controller then moved over to FFXI with the same setup before moving on to Lineage and EQ2 on my computer. Sure, EQOA and FFXI didn't have the customization element to it, but it doesn't need to have that in order to be fun.
My wife and I even had two televisions set up next to each other, her on her PS2, me on mine. We had some great times and I even wish my PS2 could handle EQ2 because I'd be back on the couch in a second.
I play both WoW and FFxi. Both are good games but VERY differnet from each other. I will say that WoW is much more casual friendly. I am honestly surprised by the continued growth in population in FFxi. Sure I know alot of people that have quit the game for one reasion or another but it always seems like someone takes their place. The numbers I have seen online suggest that FFxi has had about a 50% growth in the last year or so. And that would jive with what I see in-game. And most of the new people aren't Japanese. I would say new people are about 70% NA and 30% EU. So what I guess I am getting at is that FFxi isn't even on the decline yet even though I agree that it does get much press and it has a much smaller player base than WoW (~700k vs ~6Mil).
p.s. one odd thing, about 40% of the people that I know who quit FFxi for WoW have since quit WoW and are playing FFxi again.
Yeah, no doubt that WoW has a bigger following than FFxi but his point is somewhat valid. I don't really see anyone beating WoW's player base (over the next 2 years or so) but it could happen someday. Do I think that SE would beat them because they have a game that runs on PS3/Xbox and the PC, no way. But I think it's safe to say WoW would add more users if they supported the PS3/Xbox. I think multiplatform games are the wave of the future but WoW is a big success without multiplatform support. Being multiplatform only allows more people to buy the game. But the game has to drive people to buy it.
Well, at least consoles have the capability of doing voice chat, which most PC MMORPG's still don't support. Having a limited number of controls on the controller will be a disadvantage, but it's good that teammates will be able to communicate with each other without having to use Teamspeak or some other 3rd party solution.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
To upgrade my OS to Vista purely for games, and I also will not get caught up in the 360/PS3 and attached format war, so it looks my only gaming will be XP Pro and the Revolution with the DS for portability for some time.
Vista offers nothing of value or interest and I really don't see a mass switch to Vista happening so the least amount of sales MS sees should hopefully stop this new "trend" of claiming new games will be Vista-only.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Handheld MMOs are the future. As we begin to see more and more wifi access being readily available, what's really going to sell the handheld systems - especially in Japan - is going to be the wave of online rpgs coming forth. (I'm referring to the PSP and the DS, since those two are the only systems I am aware of with wifi connectivity). Yes yes, I am aware the DS is selling very well in Japan, but just wait untill something like pokemon the mmo comes out for the DS. You won't be able to stock the shelves fast enough. That is, of course, if they don't have any problems running their MMO servers...
I might be somewhat a FFXI fanboy myself, but its only cause I played both games and saw the weaknesses Blizzard has in WoW, the biggest being a lack of storyline and the sheer lack of high lvl content on a game where it's inherantly designed for high lvl players.
Battlegrounds and ganking low lvls who stray into contested areas can only support people for so long. And players are getting tired of killing HNMs for that .5% increase in damage over a weapon of the exact same design and shape.
While I am sure the expantions going to be a huge draw because of the added new races and such, give it another year and a half and I have a feeling Blizzard will be seriously hurting unless they start addressing the endgame problems. As it is I know of a lot of FFXI players who left because of the timesink issues to play WoW only to come back because of the endgame issues and lack of a feeling of accomplishment that WoW gave them after a few months. While there are plenty of people who really dont care about that stuff, you need to adress both sides not one or the other.
SE saw the timesink problems, which is why there are a huge number of ways to get XP now, from scrolls, jobs who can actually boost XP (Corsar has a actual move that if lucky boosts XP gain for a short time) gear that gives XP bonus, instances that give XP AND you can purchase XP with points upon finishing and even the new signat for the added zones gives a XP bonus while worn. Bliz still hasnt address the endgame issues which as this point it really should have.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
You mean like how the 360 version came out year(s) after the PS2 version?
Next.
unless Blizzard can get their act together and see that computer gaming is on its way out.
Stop.
Just... Stop.
When you can play F.E.A.R., counterstrike:source, C&C Generals:zero hour, Eve Online, and Civ IV without a mouse and a high-def monitor 18 inches from your nose, let me know.
sig?
I agree, the two games are very different, or at least feel that way. I've played FFXI for the last two years and decided to give WoW a try. After a couple of months I dropped WoW and went back to FFXI in part because I just preferred the FFXI aesthetic, but the final straw was not being able to logon to WoW more than half the time.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
http://www.mmogchart.com/
Because being #4 means no one plays it...
Some of us quit playing World of Timesink and FFXI because both games had the capacity to eat our schedules whole. I got into a high-level raiding guild last college quarter, and I had to quit two weeks into the quarter because I realised that I wasnt going to be able to participate in everything they did and still go to all my classes.
The problem that I had with FFXI was their requirement of a 5-person party for everything. I didnt enjoy having to sit in zones typing "42THF LFP" for an hour so that I could spend 30 minutes getting crap experience before someone screwed up and wiped the entire group. Skilled parties in FFXI were so few and far between for me that I clearly remember what the party was composed of, and why it didnt suck.
There was also a huge problem I had with the subjob eliteists who would not accept me into their party without a specific job/subjob combination. It was really annoying getting invited, then removed because I was subbing Warrior and they wanted that extra 4 DEX from an offhand. Nevermind that my damage from Sneak/Trick was capped anyway, so even if I had more +DEX/+AGI gear, I could never actually break the cap.
Finally, I quit playing THF and started leveling WAR, then eventually I just quit because I realised that there was nothing I could do with less than an 8 hour time investment.
Both games have their problems. WoW's problem centers more around the complete lack of casual content. They say they're designing a casual-friendly game, then they turn around at endgame and dont release any dungeons for less than 20 people. When they do release small-group endgame dungeons, the equipment provided is not consistent with the rest of the endgame. Their solution to casual-friendly playing is to not give casuals any decent equipment. Then they dont seperate people into different battlegrounds, so the hardcore players grind casuals all day.
SRSLY.
That said, I still don't think a portable MMO is worthwhile, since the only time I am on the move for that long at once is on road trips... which would require EVDO or similar uses to work. Maybe eventually, but not yet...
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
why without a mouse. only the gamecube doesnt have mouse support. and 360 and PS3 have high def support. But sales speak for themselves. PC's will always have the cooler games yes, but PC gaming has been a MAJOR slump for years and even the huge hit WoW was didnt pull it out.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/news/show_blog_entry .php?topic_id=24533453
looks like thats one of the games you wanted to brag about
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Thank you for being intelligent.
It might interest some people who think that this game is "dying" to know that the new expansion has (in my area) completely sold out in every store, forcing me to possibly buy it online and wait to get it shipped. Hundreds of copies of this game vanished the first day it was available. Do people buy expansions to dying games? No.
Theres nothing you can't do with windows98 that you can do with windows vista when it comes to programming a game. They just 'struck a deal' to do this. I also refuse to buy any windows vista only video games.
God spoke to me.
Wait, did you say MMO Strategy? WTF? I WANT THIS!!! Well, better sign up for classes in Japanese... sigh...
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Some do support it- Dungeons and Dragons Online, for example.
Ignoring that- I find a good teamspeak or ventrillo server is FAR better than any built in voice chat I've ever used. I'd rather just have in game bindings for connecting a TS client to a given server and room than having them write a voice comm program as part fo the game.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Besides, if you really want to RP and don't want to hear it, it's just like any other channel. You can just turn it off.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The Mac doesn't have anything compelling that is "Mac-only" when it comes to games. Apple is being bitten now by doing the Right Thing and going with open standards such as OpenGL.
So, people developing games for the Mac won't topple MS. Why? Because it won't be too much work to make them work on Windows (which also has OpenGL), or hell, even on Linux. If developers find Windows lacks the features they need from OpenGL, Nvidia and ATI will rush to support them, if as many developers start doing this as you hope. They've done it once before -- Doom 3 and Quake 4 are exclusively OpenGL, no DirectX renderer at all, and because there's actually competition between Nvidia and ATI, neither will take the chance that "Doom 3 only works on Nvidia -- the Way it's Meant to be Played" or "Quake4 only works on ATI..."
In fact, if I ever write a game, I'm definitely going for the largest audience possible -- I'll write it for Mono/.NET, so I don't have to do any portability code at all. I'll just let my users know when I can't find a feature of OpenGL that they need, and give them a bootable Linux so they can know whether to buy new hardware or complain to their OS/driver providers...
It's a pipe dream, but I kicked ass at that game.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Google "Shattered Galaxies" or "Navy Field." The graphics are old school on both, but they are still fun and you can try them for free.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
So when I went in to EB Games just now and was told to come back next week because they only had enough FFXI Expansion disks for preorders I guess "nobody" was the one buying em all up. This reminds me of a comic, where the kids blamed stuff on "nobody" "notme" "someone else" etc etc.
Meme police here again!
Please cease and desist.
In other news, the Bush administration has been caught posting on religious forums with quotes like "now that Islam has pretty much been abandoned by most people...."
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/brothersina rms3/news.html
"Next chapter of Gearbox's Brothers in Arms franchise named, confirmed for PS3, Xbox 360, PC; dated for holiday season."
The big problems I see are
... it'd have to be 5 on 1 just to keep things "even".
a) If they put console-players and PC-players in the same world/realm/whatever. I'd love it if Halo 2 supports console vs PC
b) If they dumb down/scale the UI/game so it functions better on Console (see Oblivion)
A PS3 port for FFXI is necessary because, while the PS3 can play PS2 games, the PS2 version has severe graphical limitations. With the PS3, you could put the graphics back on par with the 360 and PC versions, and actually make it look nice on an HDTV (FFXI on PS2 on my HD looks really blocky).
Lots of pre-orders = we buy stock for shelves.
few pre-orders = we don't want any extra.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I don't understand why one cares about things like formats, companies, or whatever... Are you purchasing the Revolution because of it's popularity in the online presses for the controller and the cheap price and Nintendo's "focus on games" (which is rather a rather laughable statement really--the hardware division is responsible for it's part while the devs are responsibel for making awesome games)?
If your purchasing the Revolution because your favorite games or genre of games will be on it then kudos to you. I will be buying the ps3 unless the xbox360 and less likely the revolution woo's me with much greater games. Which at this point both look highly unlikely (i keep my pc up to date and that negates 90% of the reason for me to want an xbox).
Hmmm... Pie...
I guess the stack of 20 copies I saw was fake huh. I had the same problem with WoW btw when it first came out. Both times I ended up buying one of the few copies left at Futureshop.
WoW has shown that is possible to eliminate most zoning vs games like EQ where you constantly zoned from one area to another
Little tidbit of info for you:
Asheron's Call was doing this in 1998.
While I've slowly accepted that console FPSing isn't as horrible as it was before (GRAW has a decent move/look setup) I still don't think it's anywhere near as good a a kb/m setup.