The Future of Console MMOs

[GameBanshee News]

Gamasutra is offering up another op-ed piece, this time focusing on why Microsoft might lose to Sony when it comes to console-based MMORPGs.

The piece 'Delay of Game' was originally published in the pages of the late, lamented Games for Windows magazine. That article, which touches on some well-known delayed and cancelled games, contains the most recent discussion of Microsoft’s most tragic MMO closure: Mythica. I mourned the game’s loss back in 2004, and even then it was very clear why Microsoft had cut it free from development:

[Microsoft says] there are too many games already, we don’t think there is a market for our game. Besides Mythica, Microsoft also has an entire gaming platform to support …

Despite the protestations of Microsoft’s PR department, it should be mentioned that Mythic Studios had a lawsuit pending against MS … In all likelihood all of these reasons resulted in Mythica’s cancellation. Two years of development time is not something easily thrown away, even by the likes of Microsoft.

It is somewhat difficult for me to understand what goes on in the company’s corporate mind. It’s almost like their are two mental models at work.

On one hand you have a company willing to put everything on the line for the untested Xbox 360 concept. On the other, you have a corporation that wasn’t willing to even try to put an MMO on the market. The 360 and Xbox Live have been hugely expensive gambles, and in the U.S. and EU they’ve paid off.

So why cut Mythica? Given the marketplace at the time (pre-World of Warcraft) it would have very likely attracted a respectable following, and might have even done very well. It was ahead of its time with the concept of instancing and storytelling in games, and offering a unique themed experience that still hasn’t been adequately tapped by the MMO genre.

Trends that were explored in Gods and Heroes (another canceled game) and are going to be touched on lightly in Age of Conan were given center stage in Mythica: Norse mythology, the gods walking among the adventuring populace, etc.