Xbox Live Gold requires a monthly subscription in order to play your games online. When you figure that Elder Scrolls Online already has a cover charge of $14.99 a month, this means that Xbox users will be expected to pay 20% more than their PC brethren and possibly PS4 users (Sony has previously said that publishers will decide on the PS+ requirement). The good news is that Bethesda is working behind the scenes to convince Microsoft to give the company a pass. According to Paul Sage from Zenimax:
“we have been in talks with Microsoft about that very thing, and seeing whether or not there’s any room to change their minds about that, for folks who are only paying The Elder Scrolls Online and don’t want to pay for an Xbox Live Gold subscription, just to pay the Elder Scrolls Online.
Will it work? Probably not, if previous attempts are any indication. Microsoft isn’t exactly known for making exemptions.
Official Xbox Magazine has a new article out detailing new, notably harsher stance on griefing. With the new Xbox One coming out, Microsoft wants to encourage good behavior while putting a damper on players shouting down their mic or sending obscenity-laced messages filled with questions about one’s own sexuality, or the promiscuity of their mother, among other topics. Rather than outright banning the player, Microsoft is working on placing them in their own personal hell, filled with the other griefers and microphone screamers. Players of low reputation will find themselves matched up with others of similarly low reputation.
“There are industry best practices we’ve looked at, about giving kudos and props to people who behave well. We’ve learned from everything we’ve seen, and we’re trying to take it to the next level. So there’ll be very good things that happen to people that just play their games and are good participants. And you’ll start to see some effects if you continue to play bad or, or harass other people en masse. You’ll probably end up starting to play more with other people that are more similar to you.”
Now, Senior Product Manager Mike Lavin has refused to call this an Xbox Hell, noting that some players might enjoy playing with other trolls. There are still a lot of kinks to be worked out, specifics to flesh out, and cobwebs to be dusted. Hopefully this will put a damper on Xbox Live’s notoriously, shall we say, talkative community.
Meridian 59 is acclaimed as the first MMORPG, following a long line of Multi-User-Dungeons (MUDs) and paving the way for Ultima Online to come in and steal the show only to give way to Everquest, and eventually World of Warcraft. Despite a fifteen year timeline, these titles are still up and running to this day, Meridian making its rounds at fifteen years. Unfortunately if these titles had been released on the home console market, they would have died out a long time ago.
When Turbine said that developing for a console was easier than developing for a PC, they were 100% correct, but for the wrong reasons. Developing for a console is easy because you can optimize the game for one configuration, hence why each current generation console is able to get current generation graphics despite comparatively low specs to the equal PC (A pc may need two gigabytes of ram to what the console only requires 512 megabytes). With a console you don’t have to worry about people screaming for support for every obscure peripheral device, and cheating is much less of an issue (well it was at least).
I said the most important thing an MMO has to deal with for success is retention rate, not only pulling in a lot of subscribers but keeping them there after they have started paying those monthly fees. Obviously keeping the game flowing is a cause, but it all pours into keeping the subscribers happy while keeping your focus of the game.
Console MMOs, however, have a generally unmentioned brick wall: Life expectancy. This week Microsoft announced that on April 15th, Xbox Live will shut down for good on the original Xbox. Not only will service for the Xbox shut down, but also service for all Xbox Original games on the 360, meaning say goodbye to your Halo 2 multiplayer statistics, those are gone. Now, the Xbox doesn’t have any MMOs to speak of, but it does raise a firm brick wall: Not only does the MMO have to deal with its own life expectancy, but that of the console’s online service. Granted, an MMO that was released on the Xbox two years before the Xbox 360 launch would have enjoyed a five year lifetime, but you could still look towards Everquest, Ultima Online, and Meridian that are still running after ten years.
As far as console MMOs, players have the choice between Final Fantasy XI, Everquest, and almost nothing else. Phantasy Star Universe is here, but shutting down on all systems sans Xbox360 this March, and Massive Action Game is making its rounds on the PS3 but just launched last month. Other than Final Fantasy’s success, which has been slight compared to the PC MMO market, and Everquest limping along which topped out at below thirty thousand and has since dropped, the only other MMO to speak of is the Phantasy Star Universe line. Each Phantasy Star Online title in the franchise has had a two to three year life expectancy before shutting down due to low subscriber numbers.
So the MMO market in consoles may be bigger, but tapping into that market is a difficult venture that has yet to be accomplished. Age of Conan, Star Trek Online, Champions Online, The Secret World, and DC Universe Online are just a few of the titles looking to break into the MMO marketplace, with Massive Action Game just recently launching on the PS3 to much support from the fans. Although doing analysis would be much easier if the publishers would give us straight numbers on the titles, all we can do is go by the official reports, as well as reports from players on the field.
Is there a console version of World of Warcraft (not literally) that will rise up and tell all of the other console MMOs how the game is really played? If the (slightly buggy) transferral of Final Fantasy XI from the Playstation 2 to the Playstation 3 is any indicator, hopefully we can avoid the human aspect of the console MMO (That just because your neighbor was gunned down at the age of 25 and you weren’t doesn’t mean you are going to live forever).
MMO Fallout 