25 new MMP Games in development

Sir Bruce has posted a nice summary of all of the new MMP games that were shown at E3 this year. Also checkout the latest rev of his MMOG Active Subscriber charts.

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Xbox 360: You Keep Spinning Me Right Round Baby

With the public unveiling of Nintendo Revolution earlier this week at E3, all three major console vendors have now declared their intentions of delivering new hardware to consumers by 2006, with Xbox 360 leading the pack with its promised worldwide delivery in time for the 2005 year-end shopping season. The technical specs for the Xbox 360 are impressive, and represent a substantial improvement over the current generation of consoles.

J Allard has indicated that Microsoft’s strategy is to reach beyond the 18-34 hardcore gaming male and connect to mainstream consumers. With the ability to function as a DVD player, networked media hub, and video recorder in addition to incredibly powerful gaming system, they may very well succeed. Even Electronic Arts, which in previous years has snubbed Microsoft in order to focus on PS2 development, has committed the largest lineup of games for any console launch with titles such as Madden NFL 06, Need for Speed Most Wanted, The Godfather The Game, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06, NBA Live 06, and FIFA 06 all scheduled to ship holiday 2005.

Out of the 160 Xbox 360 games currently in development, are there any MMOs to be found? One is Huxley, a MMOFPS being developed by Webzen, the Korean developer responsible for Mu Online. Little is known about Huxley at this point, but Webzen is clearly an experienced MMO developer, with millions of subscribers to Mu Online (actual data here is pretty sketchy, since Webzen seems to count created accounts as “subscribers”).

Recent rumors are that Vanguard: Saga of Heroes will be an Xbox 360 launch title.

Japanese powerhouse publisher Square Enix has committed to developing titles for the Xbox 360 platform with the first being Final Fantasy XI, which will support Xbox Live and allow interaction with PC gamers. However, this is a straight port, not a game update, and will run the same servers as the PC and PS2 versions. Square revealed that the game was originally in development for current generation Xbox, but couldn’t reach an agreement with Microsoft that would let players use PlayOnline instead of Xbox Live.

Clearly, it’s all about Xbox Live. Many developers have said that they have pursued a publishing relationship for MMO games with Microsoft’s Xbox, only to be turned off by Microsoft’s insistence that the game service be conducted through Xbox Live. There are three major developer objections to MMOs on Xbox Live: service, revenue, and market.

The service issue is all about who operates the game servers. From Microsoft’s point of view, they are responsible for and have a business interest in keeping the game servers running 24-7. Any down time or server instability reflects on the entire Xbox Live service, a business they desperately want to grow. From the publisher’s point of view, operating the servers is part of their business, and giving away control to a party not experienced with supporting MMOs seems like a bad idea. Interestingly, both Microsoft and the company funding development of the games see themselves in publisher roles, so it’s not hard to understand why they keep stepping on each other’s toes. Square Enix appears to have sidestepped this issue with FFXI, which will purportedly use the same servers as currently running for PC and PS2 users.

Even if a publisher were willing to allow Microsoft to host their game servers, allowing Microsoft to control the revenue stream is even more repugnant. Receiving royalties from Microsoft is not appealing to publishers who are accustomed to controlling 100% of the revenue generated by a title. Even if Microsoft’s cut were a mere 10%, the profitability of a title could be significantly reduced, particularly if the operating costs of the game are high. One way around this problem is for Microsoft to be the sole publisher of the title, being responsible for funding, marketing, and supporting the game. So far, this is a role that Microsoft has not managed to successfully see to fruition (True Fantasy Live Online, Mythica). Critics of this statement will point to Asheron’s Call, but it could be equally argued that AC provides another example in its defense.

The final obstacle for MMOs on Xbox Live is the size of the market. There were 1 million Xbox Live Subscribers on July 15th, 2004. Xbox Live reached 1.4 million subscribers in Jan 2005, a growth of 400,000 new subscribers in 6 months. Microsoft estimates that by the end of June, over 2 million people will be Xbox Live subscribers and announced that all accounts will seamlessly transfer between both the Xbox and the Xbox 360 platforms.

Those are great numbers for Microsoft, but not necessarily great for an MMO publisher. Assuming you could get 10% of all Xbox Live subscribers as MMO players, you would peak out at about 150,000 users. Those would be respectable US subscription numbers, but that’s assuming you have no significant competition in that market competing for that same 10%. That also gives you very little room for churn, since your potential pool of new players is limited.

Clearly, Xbox Live will have to significantly increase its subscriber numbers before it is more appealing to MMO publishers and developers. Penetration of Xbox Live to Xbox owners has been less than 10% to date (19.9 million consoles sold as of December 2004 quarter). One major obstacle to online gaming for console owners is simply lack of connectivity; few consumers have wired networking at the location of their entertainment centers. Perhaps in the final analysis, it will be the inclusion of built-in WiFi to the Xbox 360 that will have the most considerable impact on Xbox Live adoption.

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Call For Proposals: AI Game Programming Wisdom 3

Steve Rabin over at AIWisdom.com dropped me an email to announce:

Once again Charles River Media and series editor Steve Rabin are looking for game developers to share their wisdom in the next brand new volume of the groundbreaking AI Game Programming Wisdom series. Anything that an AI game programmer would typically deal with is fair game, including pathfinding, animation control, scripting, learning, and various decision-making techniques. Selected authors will have several months to write and will share in a portion of the book's royalties. Proposals for 8-20 page articles are now being accepted until June 1st.

Click here for details.

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Embedding Blogs into Games?

The folks over at MIT's Technology Review are asking when we are going to start embedding blogs into games, especially MMP games.

Into the games themselves? Indeed. Why not place a blog within a massively multiplayer role playing game, the argument goes, where participants can offer fellow players advice, comment on game play, give tips, or spout off on any topic they choose? It seems like a natural extension of the kind of enthusiasm usually found for these games, say proponents, and could help foster a stronger sense of community within the game. Alas, few are looking into this at the moment, but some observers believe it won't be long before game players find blogs in the games themselves.

Most MUDs had embedded bulletin boards (BBS) but commercial MMP games have moved this functionality out into external web-based forums that are policed by community management teams. These forums deal largely with out-of-character issues like complaining about the latest combat upgrade or the nerfing of my favorite class.

But what about in-character issues? How can gameplay be served by embedding blogs or blog-like functionality inside the game itself and what would be the downside of doing so?

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