Explaining the Dearth of Console MMOGs 123
spielermacher writes "Gamasutra is running an interesting analysis written by Flying Lab Software Producer Joe Ludwig explaining why there are not more successful Console MMOGs. Some reasons given: lack of keyboard, MMOG players like to play in pairs, business model doesn't always work out for the developer, larger installed base of game-quality PCs, and others."
Re:Dearth? (Score:5, Informative)
In future you may be able to use such a device all by yourself without posting inane comments on /.
Re:No Keyboard (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How About The Dearth of Comment? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No Keyboard (Score:3, Informative)
Half-wrong... (Score:3, Informative)
There are other reasons to want a keyboard -- keyboards have far more buttons than controllers, meaning more actions, and MMOs can be complex. And there's the registration, login, etc.
There were some good points here, and I'll stick with my PC platform as long as I can -- on Linux -- but I don't see anything compelling.
Here's one thing that does matter: MMOs are big, and getting bigger. Much of them must be download in patches. It's difficult to buy a computer with a hard drive less than 80 gigs these days. It's difficult to buy a console with a hard drive more than 60 gigs, unless something's changed.
Oh, and consoles very likely won't allow mods. Many people live by their WoW UI mods, custom voice chat, etc.
Console specs (Score:3, Informative)
But the system runs on the PowerPC core.
The XBox is the only to feature 3 main cores.
Previous generation consoles (DreamCast and GameCube) supported keyboard, either by using a console-specific keyboard or by using a PS/2-to-console adapter with whatever keyboard you have lying around.
And even if this required some hardware purchase (both hardware for the keyboard and a broadband modem if either you had a GC or didn't like the built-in analog of the DC), that didn't prevent hack'n'slashes like Phatansy Star Online to be produced and achieve success on those consoles.
The keyboard was even supported on the DC version of Quake 3 to offer classic keyboard and mouse gameplay style.
In addition the keyboard it self is a pretty lame excuse. Radial menus have already been proved to be efficient (Silver is an example of PC+DC game which used radial menus for quick accesses) and consoles gamepads have pretty much enough axes to allow radial menus. So it's possible to put enough short-cuts even if there's no keyboard.
My opinion is that the current crop of top MMORPG that are both successful and well marketed happen to run on PCs.
In short : almost everybody is on WoW currently, and WoW runs only on Windows PCs. It's hard to compete with it and be successful by introducing yet another MMOG in a saturated market where PC games already have a monopoly.