NCsoft president: MMO shift to consoles inevitable

Consoles are getting pretty powerful, not only in terms of hardware but in connectivity as well. With that kind of foundation, MMOs have slowly made their way onto consoles; one of the more notable being Final Fantasy XI. But are games like FFXI only the first of many? Will MMOs soon be as popular on consoles as they are on PCs? NCsoft‘s president Chris Chung thinks so. Check out the full article to read more.

MMOs have a solid place on PCs; but are they destined to make their mark on consoles as well? There have been some notable MMORPGs for consoles, like Final Fantasy XI, but so far they’re a minority as a console genre. An important question now hangs: Is all this about to change.

NCsoft‘s North America President Chris Chung recently remarked in an interview that MMOs on consoles are inevitable.  The South Korean-based company is the force behind popular MMOs like Guild Wars and Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa.

NCsoft caught a nice break when it  scored an exclusivity deal with Sony last year. The studio will be releasing four new MMORPGs on the PlayStation 3 sometime in the future. When asked about these upcoming games, Chung remarked that:

I think there are a lot of causes that factor into good MMOs on a console. These are elements like ‘does the person have a standard definition TV or an HDTV? You don’t have a good a resolution on regular TV, and a lot of games were hurting for that.

Ultimately, we have to really optimize for consoles; we have to create an experience that’s suited for the [PS3] and supports the MMO element. I think the shift is inevitable; real-time strategy is one of the last PC genres moving onto consoles, and I think we’ll see a similar trend for online games as well.

Via GameDaily