Blizzard confirms Xbox 360 Live Architecture unfriendly for MMORPGs

ArSorry to let you down but the insanely popular online game WOW (World of Warcraft) will not be coming to the Xbox360. Mirroring Jeff Strain’s statement from earlier this week, Blizzard’s COO Paul Sams has said that the an “360 version of World of Warcraft is most definitely not in the works.” The MMORPG, World of Warcraft boasts a massive subscription list topping 6 million, and has one per every 1000 persons playing, worldwide.

“We do not have any plans to take WoW to Xbox 360,” Blizzard COO Paul Sams told MCV. “WoW is built as a PC gaming experience. Porting PC games to console often compromises games, and we’d never allow the WoW gameplay experience to suffer.

Also, it’s important to us that the entire player base is able to play together. Microsoft’s Xbox Live architecture is very protected from all sorts of outside influence, so shared play between 360 and PC owners would be very tough. We wouldn’t even consider WoW for 360 unless we could overcome that hurdle.”

Sams also noted that while he does expect plenty of MMO’s to eventually hit the newer consoles, he emphasized the control differences and stated that, “developers will have to overcome the difficulties presented by the use of a joypad instead of a keyboard.”
ArSorry to let you down but the insanely popular online game WOW (World of Warcraft) will not be coming to the Xbox360. Mirroring Jeff Strain’s statement from earlier this week, Blizzard’s COO Paul Sams has said that the an “360 version of World of Warcraft is most definitely not in the works.” The MMORPG, World of Warcraft boasts a massive subscription list topping 6 million, and has one per every 1000 persons playing, worldwide.

“We do not have any plans to take WoW to Xbox 360,” Blizzard COO Paul Sams told MCV. “WoW is built as a PC gaming experience. Porting PC games to console often compromises games, and we’d never allow the WoW gameplay experience to suffer.

Also, it’s important to us that the entire player base is able to play together. Microsoft’s Xbox Live architecture is very protected from all sorts of outside influence, so shared play between 360 and PC owners would be very tough. We wouldn’t even consider WoW for 360 unless we could overcome that hurdle.”

Sams also noted that while he does expect plenty of MMO’s to eventually hit the newer consoles, he emphasized the control differences and stated that, “developers will have to overcome the difficulties presented by the use of a joypad instead of a keyboard.”