MS AND SCEA Honchos Talk About MMOs in Xbox and PS3
A significant number of gamers have been wondering how much effort MS and Sony put in creating MMOs for their consoles that are almost as good, if not better, than the real thing. So to give you the answer to that particular question are Sony’ Kaz Hirai and Microsoft’s Peter Moore; just by reading their responses to that particular inquiry, clearly there’s a distinct difference in opinion between these two.
When asked about it, SCEA honcho Kaz Hirai said “given the fact that online is going to be an integral part of the experience, MMOs I think are a natural fit in the world of PlayStation 3. I certainly think consumers can expect a lot coming out of PlayStation 3 in that particular genre. We’ve gone down that path already, even with PlayStation 2, and it’s been very popular. There’s no reason why we would suddenly say, ‘PlayStation 3, no MMOs.’ … This time around it’s right around the box for online, so I think there’s a lot more in terms of opportunities for content creators to come out with MMOs.”
As for MS’s top man, Peter Moore, said “there obviously is a resurgence driven by ‘WOW’ (World of Warcraft), and we love it because it’s driving PC adoption. The question is, is it a console experience? They’ve never really done tremendously well on the consoles. There’s a lot of stuff you need to do. The content constantly needs to be refreshed. There’s patches, there’s updates. We could do it … but it’s always been a keyboard-and-mouse, kind of lean-in experience. You look at ‘Guild Wars,’ you look at ‘WOW,’ obviously. … Now, we’re going to an MMO with Marvel. I think that is a nice bridge because it’s familiar characters and a familiar environment, a kind of comic-book look and feel. But for a lot of people, still, MMOs are a little too intense and a little geeky at times (to make sense for a console).”
With the war between these two consoles looming, it’s really worth noticing how they plan to cover every inch of the gaming world. Perhaps sensing that the MMO market is a vital part towards both companies’ goal (of toppling the other one), they were both more than willing to venture towards developing technology that can give the same experience as MMORPGs. Well, one of them’s bound to ‘succeed’ less than the other one, I wonder…
A significant number of gamers have been wondering how much effort MS and Sony put in creating MMOs for their consoles that are almost as good, if not better, than the real thing. So to give you the answer to that particular question are Sony’ Kaz Hirai and Microsoft’s Peter Moore; just by reading their responses to that particular inquiry, clearly there’s a distinct difference in opinion between these two.
When asked about it, SCEA honcho Kaz Hirai said “given the fact that online is going to be an integral part of the experience, MMOs I think are a natural fit in the world of PlayStation 3. I certainly think consumers can expect a lot coming out of PlayStation 3 in that particular genre. We’ve gone down that path already, even with PlayStation 2, and it’s been very popular. There’s no reason why we would suddenly say, ‘PlayStation 3, no MMOs.’ … This time around it’s right around the box for online, so I think there’s a lot more in terms of opportunities for content creators to come out with MMOs.”
As for MS’s top man, Peter Moore, said “there obviously is a resurgence driven by ‘WOW’ (World of Warcraft), and we love it because it’s driving PC adoption. The question is, is it a console experience? They’ve never really done tremendously well on the consoles. There’s a lot of stuff you need to do. The content constantly needs to be refreshed. There’s patches, there’s updates. We could do it … but it’s always been a keyboard-and-mouse, kind of lean-in experience. You look at ‘Guild Wars,’ you look at ‘WOW,’ obviously. … Now, we’re going to an MMO with Marvel. I think that is a nice bridge because it’s familiar characters and a familiar environment, a kind of comic-book look and feel. But for a lot of people, still, MMOs are a little too intense and a little geeky at times (to make sense for a console).”
With the war between these two consoles looming, it’s really worth noticing how they plan to cover every inch of the gaming world. Perhaps sensing that the MMO market is a vital part towards both companies’ goal (of toppling the other one), they were both more than willing to venture towards developing technology that can give the same experience as MMORPGs. Well, one of them’s bound to ‘succeed’ less than the other one, I wonder…
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