Category: 
In the Sony press conference this week that was so dull that it made me want to throw my PS3 out the window and then jump out after it, they wound up with the SOE announcements. Sony Online entertainment has Batman: Hush artist Jim Lee signed on to help develop a new MMO featuring the DC Comics universe. The Agency is also going to be a large-scale MMO shooter, and will be exclusive the Playstation 3 platform. Readers can look forward to the upcoming exclusive interview with the team of female developers who are working on The Agency right here at Geek Woman Speaks.
If Sony can successfully get a an MMO off the ground it would be a big coop. But in the past when mixing genres the MMO formulae can fizzle out. Tabula Rasa is shooter MMO with an impeccable pedigree from NCSoft and Richard Garriot. It is doing well but it hasn’t attracted the numbers of FPS - Halo fans that they had most likely hoped for. They also tried and failed with Auto Assault, a short lived but very deep MMORPG that was basically a Mad Max world with rad tanks and mad guns. That one did so poorly that it shut down. Then City of Heroes the super - hero MMO has an avid following but it isn’t the most popular online game either. It may consistently be in the top ten. Would it be new comers to the PS3, from the PC world of gaming that will embrace these console MMO’s? My prediction is that the next ‘Ever World Quest of Warcraft’ MMORPG could happen on the PS3. But they have to get that delicate recipe right.
I haven’t forgotten about Sony’s failed attempt at sword and sorcery, Vanguard which was so glitchy and so obtuse that it flat-lined. It is a perfect example of how elusive the alchemy of getting an MMORPG to work is. At least one is launched every day, and at least one goes down in flames every day too. Someone in the Sony press conference dubiously tried to take credit for Ever Quest II. Could it be that they believe that taking over maintenance of a successful MMO four years into its run is the same as bringing a new one online? It isn’t heaps of money that makes a good MMO go, it’s that magickal blende of passion and insanity on the part of developers that makes the software hatch into a creation. Not every company that tries has the right spirit to make a new world. The idea that an “MMO Shooter” would be the holy grail of sales could be just fools gold.
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