Sony Online Entertainment to follow World of Warcraft on global scale

In an exclusive interview with Sony Online Entertainment’s David Christensen, new vice president of business development and international operations, Next-Gen was able to extract SOE‘s desire to trace Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft and deliver an MMO champ to be remembered by. Their first order of business was to establish an international footprint.

So while keeping a firm hand on Europe and North America, Sony Online Entertainment glanced over to the other half of the world and saw how much work lay waiting for them.

South America, India, Vietnam and the Philippines were just some of the names mentioned by Sony, after they identified the most active countries where MMO gamers would love to try out new games given the chance

But of course, Sony does have its share of competition. So far, Korean development companies have been also successful with their own local products that had taken Asia and parts of the West by storm. Trying to insert a viable product in the same market to compete with tried-and-tested (and free for the most part) MMOs would prove unnervingly difficult.

Hakkyu Kim‘s Granado Espada (Sword of the New World) is one such title that has just recently been tapped into by the Asian market following the recent announcement of a closed beta program. It’s been gaining amazing foothold on most Asian countries and could become a brilliant Asian WoW by itself.

But Christensen is still keeping positive, claiming that they do have an ability to enter the local markets and not “be competing with several hundred MMOs” that gamers are already hooked into. SOE is currently trying to establish relations with key entertainment and online technology companies.

They already have games in Taiwan, China and Korea, but Christensen remains adamant that it’s just “a very small footprint” they they have established on foreign markets. Is it safe to say that the world MMO market should be seeing Sony branded MMO games coming to other countries soon? With Sony’s premier focus on catering to low-cost local economies, you could say that.

Via Next Generation

In an exclusive interview with Sony Online Entertainment’s David Christensen, new vice president of business development and international operations, Next-Gen was able to extract SOE‘s desire to trace Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft and deliver an MMO champ to be remembered by. Their first order of business was to establish an international footprint.

So while keeping a firm hand on Europe and North America, Sony Online Entertainment glanced over to the other half of the world and saw how much work lay waiting for them.

South America, India, Vietnam and the Philippines were just some of the names mentioned by Sony, after they identified the most active countries where MMO gamers would love to try out new games given the chance

But of course, Sony does have its share of competition. So far, Korean development companies have been also successful with their own local products that had taken Asia and parts of the West by storm. Trying to insert a viable product in the same market to compete with tried-and-tested (and free for the most part) MMOs would prove unnervingly difficult.

Hakkyu Kim‘s Granado Espada (Sword of the New World) is one such title that has just recently been tapped into by the Asian market following the recent announcement of a closed beta program. It’s been gaining amazing foothold on most Asian countries and could become a brilliant Asian WoW by itself.

But Christensen is still keeping positive, claiming that they do have an ability to enter the local markets and not “be competing with several hundred MMOs” that gamers are already hooked into. SOE is currently trying to establish relations with key entertainment and online technology companies.

They already have games in Taiwan, China and Korea, but Christensen remains adamant that it’s just “a very small footprint” they they have established on foreign markets. Is it safe to say that the world MMO market should be seeing Sony branded MMO games coming to other countries soon? With Sony’s premier focus on catering to low-cost local economies, you could say that.

Via Next Generation