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Consoles are an untapped goldmine. Why cant developers get it together?
Lord_Marshal
Member Posts: 58
People are always looking for the next best thing, this is especially true I think with mmorpgs. Alot of people are just unhappy with currently available on titles on all systems period ( such as myself).
The next generation consoles xbox360 and PS3 have the horsepower and internet capability to run mmorpgs well.
There are NO!!! mmorpgs on the 360 ( and I believe the PS3) aside from FFXI, an older title and a multi system port. Respectable game, no insult intended to it but its hardly the mmo grail. It does prove that mmo can work and work well on the xbox360.
Console owners are not all slack jawed fools who only play Halo, Gears and Resistance. Bioshock, Oblivion, Mass Effect, Fallout 3 all sold extremely well. And I've seen personally legions of fallout and oblivion fanboys crying for an mmo version of the game.
Console gamers are HUNGRY for an MMO, the market is there and unlike the fabled market of China its not a myth.
A WOW/EQ/LOTRO styled game probably wouldnt work too well on console. If you just port a PC mmo of course there will be problems with the controls. You HAVE to play to the strength of each system. The problem is when someone mentions mmo on console you imagine playing wow with a gamepad, of course that will blow.
What is wrong with an MMO that caters to the strengths of the gamepad and mic setup?
Fully integrated voice chat with a simple gamepad trigger to switch channels would take care of pretty much all communicatio issues.
For actual gameplay style gamepad would work great with either FPS style like Oblivion or Halo or over the shoulder like Gears of War.
Or you could go competely top down old school isometric with a zoom like a 3d ultima online.
Of course you would have problems if you use a WASD setup with a free floating camera like in WOW.
Just imagine an updated and retooled Planetside with more rpg elements, skills, gear, maybe talent trees on console.
Or a dark and griity Mad Max styled MMO like fallout. It could work similarly to Guild Wars, non instanced towns and then everything outside of towns are instanced plus a mad max styled thunderdome for pvp.
Just some ideas of the top of my head.
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I'm really annoyed at the lack of console MMO's in development, to say nothing of the fact there are none (okay FFXI) out right now.
Plus every game that is sopposdly going to be on console seems to be canceled or postponed. Just look at Age of Conan and the recent Champions Online announcement. Hell the way he worded it in the interview leaves me wondering if Champions will ever come to the box.
So really what am I missing here? All I have to look forward too for the next 6 months is sacred 2 and Borderlands, neither of which are actual MMO's.
Comments
Because no one gives a crap about console kids? Consoles are to video gaming what MTV is to music. It's just like video games, but dumbed down and dressed up with pretty graphics to attract the wallets of the ignorant masses.
"It is in your nature to do one thing correctly; Before me, you rightfully tremble. But, fear is not what you owe me. You owe me awe." ~Francis Dolarhyde
That's why they are called "the ignorant masses." Masses, there are a lot of them. They out-number the non idiots.
"It is in your nature to do one thing correctly; Before me, you rightfully tremble. But, fear is not what you owe me. You owe me awe." ~Francis Dolarhyde
Well I think champions and DC online are suppose to be on the console but I could be wrong. With AOC they say they are still working on it but who knows. I think the time and money spent on developing the game and then ironing out the legion of bugs and other tech issues they never get around to actaully seeing the game being ported when they are still working on the PC issues
Essentially this.
There are a lot of other contributing factors, but to list a few:
There are no publicly available xml editing tools to have the huge player-made addon market get on board.
For the 360 people would have to pay for their internet, xbox live, -and- monthly subscription fees.
_Most_ console gamers prefer consoles because their games, by and large, are simpler and easy to grasp. MMO's aren't that simple, especially the new generation that's coming.
Porting computer coded games to consoles actually requires a lot of work and even the companies with the resources aren't willing to spend them. They've done the research and it's telling them that it's not worth it. They would have to have seperate sets of servers for each region. That means more work on different servers, more work on the same patch for the different servers and the list goes on.
Gaming for consoles can be very different than gaming for PCs. You've already mentioned the controls issue, but you didn't even touch on the hardware issue.
Consoles are basically neutered PCs. The Xbox 360 has a 512mb video card with (I believe) a 750mhz processor and something around 512mb of RAM. The reason why games look so good is because there's a whole lot of optimization and engine performance modification going on. If the time was spent to optimize current PC titles, you could have Crysis looks with TF2 performance, but it's prohibitively expensive.
That raises the question of exactly how are you going to hold an MMO with modern graphics on a machine that's effectively 4-5 years old? The only ones that are going to work are those that look like WoW or FFXI. You won't get Gears of War or Halo MMOs going because the graphic processing would exceed the specs of the machine.
The second is the network. Granted, it's not so much a problem of coding, but you're talking about an extra fee for the MMO subscription on top of the Xbox360 subscription and broadband subscription. There's no way to avoid it. Plus, what if you want to play more than one character on the console? Consoles inherently lend themselves to multiplayer games (unlike PCs), so if your friend comes over and wants to play Gears of Bloodcraft with you, how does that work?
The console market is definitely still viable, but for MMO's there's a large chunk of added logistics which is an incredibly strong deterrent.
You also have to think about bug fixes, content additions, class balancing, etc. Patches are getting bigger and bigger (which is frustrating even with a 5mb connection - are you listening devs?), and when you don't have an internal hard drive to store stuff on, suddenly you're neutering one of the aspects which makes MMOs dynamic.
I won't say it's impossible (it obviously isn't), but there's a lot more to think about. For the time being, it's fitting a square peg into a round hole two sizes too small.
Yes, I am an English Major.
Two words: Mouse, keyboard.
This is why games are dumbed down for consoles. This is why FPS games on consoles have aimbots.
Put a mouse and keyboard on the console, then everything is equal to a PC.
This actually sounds like a good idea. And in fact for some people it could be better than PC, sinc econsole hardware seems to be more powerful than some PC's some people can afford. I remember preferring consoles because I couldn't run anything but a game called Graal. Those were sad days.
You dont have to be an xbox live gold member to play any game that has a subscription fee.
And Gold is 40 bucks for 13 months anyway,
Mouse and keyboard are not flat out superior, it depends on the control scheme and style of gameplay. My whole point was the console mmos should be based around a gamepad
I think a big issue is control.
1. On a console MS/Sony is going to have a LOT of say of what is going on in your game.
2. Monthly fees. Of course it can be done on a console, but from a publisher's point of view they know on a console MS or Sony is going to grab a hunk of that fee for themselves.
Face it, from a dev's point of view going with a console means having to get into bed with MS or Sony and that may not be desirable either creatively or financially.
Also I think MMO's traditionally are seen as unchartered frontiers of gaming. Once you bring it to a console the limits on whats possible or even allowed clamp down quick.
Also look at it from a console's perspecitve: Do they want to be hosting the kind of game that if successfull takes up all the player's time? The console market makes a lot of money from the sale of games, not consoles. The last thing they want is players who basically play one game to the exclusion of others. I know this is a minor point as it may not apply to a lot of people but nontheless it must be considered.
The hardware in consoles are not as good as you think. They can handle high level graphics but only in controlled situations. With MMOs you have no idea what will be displayed at any given time or how many people there will be.
The Xbox 360 has a good processor but only 512MB of shared RAM. The PS3 has 256MB system RAM and 256MB of video RAM. Most current MMOs would not be possible on the Xbox 360 or PS3. Its mainly a RAM issue.
A highly instanced world with low variety in character customization and armor would be possible. Like Guild Wars or a typical Korean grinder.
Another issue is that no matter how much the PS3 and Xbox 360 resemble PCs they are not PCs. The developers would have to create and bug test patches/updates all versions separately. Basically the developers would have to create and program the game 3 times every time.
Also, no mods. Third party mods have become an accepted and supported component of modern MMOs. I would imagine Sony would be cool with mods on the PS3 but Microsoft has been way too extreme with how strict they are.
" next gen "always make me smile.. considering that both ps3 and xbox360 were released what.. 2-3 years ago now..
that none of them have more power than mediacore pc..
that most console/pc games, turns out that console games lags and runs on constant 20 fps.. ( i ques when tv runs only at silly 25-30 fps its not that bad lmao )
you can stick your next gen where sun doesnt shine
consoles are supposedly more popular than pc gaming.. due the fact that parents buy them for their kids.. cuz there is nothing to know about it.. just whack it.. and play.. no upgrading
cuz kids doesnt pay for games.. and every adult who have console. have pc too
and go read interviews.. why mmogrps are pain in the ass on consoles.. there will be few.. both of them.. wait.. wait.. 3 2 1.. DC SUPER HERO COMICS GAMES.. no if thats not pointed towards kids then i DONT KNOW
oh yea and conan too soon.. but if you think all those mature things arent adversiting for kids.. cuz every adult seems them.. as "bleh " then you clearly just a kid still
Well, that is tru ein many ways but a PC is either 32 or 64 its so the consoles have fewer bottlenecks. The graphics cards in them are a lot worse than most PCs, that is true but you still get a lot more out of it and since the devs know exactly what hardware everyone have you get a lot less compability problems also.
Consoles do have their advantages but it is true that graphics will be worse than games for state of the art PCs. But of course few MMOs do use state of the art graphics, most use older gfx so everyone should be able to run it and the graphics on the FPS games on consoles are good enough compared to most MMOs even though some of the effects we are used to are missing.
As for the controls, you can hook up a keyboard to both PS3 and 360 so I don't see any technical problems there even though it might be odd for us PC players to not have a mouse.
No, I don't see any big reasons for MMOs to not work on consoles, but I will keep my PC instead myself.
you know I thought that Oblivion on PS3 played great and see no reason why that game couldnt be an mmo
It'd make the system catch fire. Besides, the game revolves around a lone hero - when every one is special then nobody is special. :P
It's pretty poorly optimized too. Without them chopping the world into little bits as instances, I don't see how it'd run at an enjoyable frame rate. Gah - and latency with the combat system would be BRUTAL.
Well, that is tru ein many ways but a PC is either 32 or 64 its so the consoles have fewer bottlenecks. The graphics cards in them are a lot worse than most PCs, that is true but you still get a lot more out of it and since the devs know exactly what hardware everyone have you get a lot less compability problems also.
Consoles do have their advantages but it is true that graphics will be worse than games for state of the art PCs. But of course few MMOs do use state of the art graphics, most use older gfx so everyone should be able to run it and the graphics on the FPS games on consoles are good enough compared to most MMOs even though some of the effects we are used to are missing.
As for the controls, you can hook up a keyboard to both PS3 and 360 so I don't see any technical problems there even though it might be odd for us PC players to not have a mouse.
No, I don't see any big reasons for MMOs to not work on consoles, but I will keep my PC instead myself.
The mouse is crucial. This is why console FPS games have aimbots, and PC games do not. The mouse is THE device for accuracy when it comes to pointing to something on a screen. Controllers will never come close. If you have no mouse, the game must be dumbed down for lack of an accurate pointing device.
I can see an evolution of the Wii controller bridging that gap although the current hardware is not up to the task.
I can see an evolution of the Wii controller bridging that gap although the current hardware is not up to the task.
That's a possibility. You can quickly point to a few pixels with a mouse. Any device that can also do this will work.
Yeah but teh PS3 has the cell processor! Emotion engine FTW!!!
If they're so hungry for an MMO, tell them to buy a computer.
Yawn.
You really want to play a MMO on xbox live, and hear 2000 people making racial and gay slurs all at the same time?
Hopefully they allow webcams to work on there too so everyone can just put their scrotum on the camera while they play.
Just like they did in Uno!
I see no reason to own a console. I remember back in the day the claims that consoles would be the doom of gloom for the PC gaming market. Consoles don't do anything better then a PC after all they are basically the same with consoles generally coming in with a cheaper cost overall. Developers are not going to change there focus from something as common as a house phone on a novel player base who play console games. PC's offer so much more then a console does and it will remain that way for he forseable future.
The main differences between consoles and pc's is scalability.
I mean this in the sense that you can, for a time, force your computer to scale a game up above what your specs reccomennd (overclocking). I've heard of people overclocking 360's, but I have no idea if those rumors are true and i'm willing to bet melting is common (yes, actual melting).
In a different sense a PC has scalable hardware. It's pretty easy to change out almost any part excluding your motherboard to keep it current. Not something you can do with a console, which is a whole other debate I won't get into.
I would absolutely LOVE a console based MMO, but not on one that required the use of a controller; I just can't imagine a way that it could be done without being incredibly limited.
I think we're about ripe for an amalgamation of the two control methods; a precision aiming device and perhaps a simplified version of a keyboard, (in the style of gaming keypads perhaps) designed to be used in tandem.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
^ That is the problem with PC gamers today. Elitist pricks, I realize that not everyone is like that, I love to PC game, but I also own a console. Yes you can do more with the PC than you can with a console but that is no reason to discredit consoles. Everyone I know that is a PC gamer also owns a console. Nice try Zero, but try being an elitist prick somewhere else. Flame me all you want, I dont really care.