While Playstation and PC users already had their experience cut short two years ago, 360 gamers who enjoy a bit of Phantasy Star Universe will be sorely disappointed to hear that the game will be shutting its last doors later this year. In an announcement on the Sega forums, Edward@Sega detailed that servers will come down September 7th, 2012, and that while “network mode” will no longer be available, Phantasy Star Universe will still be playable in single player.
This was not an easy decision but there comes a time when we must consider the level of service and support we can provide for an ongoing game, and balance those concerns against preparing for the future, and providing you with new opportunities and new experiences.
Players with subscriptions extending past September will be refunded by Microsoft on a pro-rated basis. You can read Edward’s notes and his eulogy at the link below. Phantasy Star Online 2 is due for release in Summer 2012 as a free to play title for PC, with versions out for the iOS and Android devices by the end of 2012, and a version for Playstation Vita coming in early 2013.
Part of my job here at MMO Fallout includes predicting the future, and occasionally I am wrong. This is not one of those times. Now, those of you who follow this website know that I have historically suggested that MMO players who want to play on the console choose the Playstation 3 over the Xbox 360, foremost as there will never be an MMO on the 360 (apart from Final Fantasy XI). Thanks in part to Microsoft’s stringent policies clashing with the inherent requirement that the game be available for regular content and patch fixes, even Square Enix has admitted that the only reason Final Fantasy XI made it onto Xbox Live was due to the system being in its infancy.
So although I offer my congratulations to Nexon for managing to get Dungeon Fighter Online on Xbox Live Arcade, I have to play devil’s advocate and point out one important fact: Dungeon Fighter Online is not an MMO. Structurally, there isn’t much difference between Dungeon Fighter and, say, Castle Crashers. The game is still run via P2P networking.
What this does bode well for is lobby-based, not really true-MMO titles, coming out on the Xbox360, which was never really a problem to begin with. As far as the traditional MMO, well you’re still better off with a Playstation 3, given the system already leads its competitor by multiple MMOs.
If you check any gaming related website, electronics store, or wikipedia, you’ll find that Square Enix is set to release Final Fantasy XIV on the 30th of September for the PC, and sometime in March next year on the Playstation 3. What you won’t find, on the other hand, is a release date, or an acknowledgement of the Xbox360 version of Final Fantasy XIV, and Square Enix would like to rectify that.
In a recent interview with VG247, producer Hiromichi Tanaka stated that the 360 version of the upcoming Final Fantasy MMO is in fact not canned on the 360, but has rather been delayed and put on hold while talks continue with Microsoft. Going further into details, Tanaka explained that Xbox Live is virtually the only hurdle keeping Final Fantasy XIV from continuing development on the platform.
I’ve been pretty unrepentant in the past with my feelings towards Microsoft and have always backed up my philosophy that if you are a console gamer looking for an MMO, your best bet is to stick with a Playstation 3. The hurdles that the developers have been reaching with Microsoft are essentially set at Microsoft’s love of money, and their need to stick their fingers into everyone else’s cookie jar, leading to the point where a deal between Microsoft and the BBC to offer streaming BBC over Xbox Live (at no cost to Microsoft) was turned down because Microsoft couldn’t make any money off of it.
As much as I hate to play the pessimist, those who are waiting out on a 360 version of Final Fantasy XIV might as well wait in line behind those still hoping for a console edition of Champions Online, Age of Conan, and Star Trek Online, who are standing right over there with the folk waiting for Duke Nukem Forever and the rapture.
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).
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