isiolia wrote:Everquest Online Adventures for PS2, and more recently DC Universe Online are some others. It is a genre that's largely unavailable on consoles though.Korpi wrote: MMORPG's have never really broken the barrier of going to consoles, PSO and FFXI are probably only ones, and in FFXI's case I think almost all of current players use PC.
SE recently had a poll asking which platform people play FFXI on (you'd think they'd be able to tell that), but I don't think the results have been shared as of yet. The typical logic presented tends to be that the Japanese market plays more on PS2, but I guess that'll be confirmed/denied when that survey data comes out.
EQOA players weren't many compared to PC players, and I believe there's no bigger updates for the game since few years ago, PC game is still getting expansions and cycling new servers through all expansions. Those servers got a bunch of old players and few new players to the game.
DC Universe could be decent example of MMORPG working on console compared to PC, but the thing is it's pretty much dead on both, and it's just not upto the standards of PC gamers, especially for ones with long history in the genre.
Very possible Japanese are playing FFXI on PS2 mostly, no idea how many they are. Rest of the world plays mainly on PC. You know what they and potential customers complain about? They complain about the crappy console implementation called PlayOnline, PS2 hardware limiting FFXI progression and horrendous console controls and UI. I've seen many people say they couldn't get into the game because of the controls and UI, or they just couldn't even get through the PlayOnline registration. I don't believe new MMORPG's could spawn something as satanistic as PlayOnline is though.
Normal console lifespan isn't that long when MMORPG's are in question, especially when the MMORPG can't be released early in the consoles lifetime, and MMORPG's have tendency to greatly advance graphically throughout the lifetime of the game. Would you, as developer, hold on to risky console market, and possibly make the game undesirable for PC gamers, who don't want console limitations in their games? PC gamers should be the focus in the first place, there's tons of bored people trying to find their next fix. I would also think, that average console player doesn't spend so much time playing at once, that they have time for MMORPG's.
I'm not saying there isn't any profit in console MMORPG's, but it isn't the easiest path to take for sure. The execution would need to please both console and PC gamers, and it should work on both platforms for upto 10 years or even more. It took very popular franchise like Final Fantasy to get people interested in FFXI, too, I would guess. It also takes a lot of money to experiment with console side of things.
Dragon Quest X is going to be for Wii and Wii U, being for two consoles and being strong franchise, I can totally see success for it in Japan. Wouldn't be so sure about rest of the world. We'll see. I don't see the next Western big hitters, GW2 and SWTOR even announcing anything about console versions, or Korean game like Tera. Guess what PSO 2's platform is going to be? Microsoft Windows, surprise, surprise...
No PC elitism is involved, just what I believe to be facts. Console focused MMORPG is possible, but I don't think it can survive on PC then, and it has to get many things right to keep console owners playing the game and to get over the subscription fee in the first place. Perhaps subscription isn't even option, F2P or expansion sales are possibly viable models for consoles.
Really sorry for the wall of text, lol...