EA 'Considering' Console Ports of Star Wars: TOR, Warhammer Online

azeroth192

To the shock and surprise of everyone who didn't see it coming a mile away (which would be no one), BioWare, LucasArts, and BioWare-owner Electronic Arts revealed Star Wars: The Old Republic at a press event yesterday, a new Stars Wars massively multiplayer game set in the Knights of the Old Republic universe. What was slightly surprising, though, is that the game is currently only confirmed for the PC. But according to Frank Gibeau, president of the EA Games label, EA is not only considering a console version of The Old Republic, but they're also considering a console version of the recently released Warhammer Online as well.

"We're definitely looking at the opportunity to bring the MMO experience to console, without question," Gibeau said when speaking to Eurogamer. "We've got this product, and we've got Warhammer at play. So we're trying to look at the primary research required to understand how would you deploy it, what the client size looks like, how big is the back-end, what the play experience looks like... Once we've got some of those questions answered, we'll be able to decide which is the right play to go after."

When pressed whether he was specifically talking about the potential of console versions for both WAR and TOR (those acronyms fit together nicely, huh?), Gibeau replied, "They're both under consideration," although he also added, "We're not really in a place to commit or announce anything specific with regards to those." But by the sound of it, it sure seems as if there's a high probability we'll be seeing a console version of at least one of these games eventually.

Lvs

Great Lore, but WoW is hard to beat with a lot of years of advantage.

mmodev

A major "barrier to entry" for mmos on a console is this...

Sony/Microsoft require all game patches to be reviewed by their company for bugs and content. MMOs are patched weekly/monthly which creates a HUGE bottleneck which is a huge turn off for new developers and even vets.

Developers would LOVE to dev for these consoles if it wasn't for this bottleneck.