Now that the pain has faded somewhat, I think it’s obvious that MUO’s death may be a good thing after all. If it was going to be a broken, license-groaning mess there was no reason for it to make it to launch. Given the rumors of confusion on the dev team about what the game was going to be like at a fundamental level, pulling support from the project seems like a no-brainer. Still, I think MUO’s death highlights Microsoft’s sordid history with Massively Multiplayer games.

If you look down the big list of cancelled or never-released Massive games, Microsoft’s name comes up a suspicious number of times. AC2 anyone? Mythica, True Fantasy Online, Vanguard, and now Marvel Universe were all dented by the Redmond giant’s deft touch. On a fundamental corporate level, I think that MS just doesn’t understand the whole MMO ‘thing’. Trash talking jock douches calling each other ‘fag’ on Xbox Live? That’s understandable. But having the patience to see something like an MMO through - not so much.

Even more than that, I think Microsoft’s stupidity when it comes to this genre has left a huge opening for Sony and the PlayStation 3. Though there are no firm plans in the public eye right now, the tide is rising for MMO experiences on Sony’s console. Has Microsoft ceded the fight without even firing a shot?

Microsoft’s Messups

The fantastic feature piece Delay of Game was originally published in the pages of (sniffle) Games for Windows magazines. The article, which touches on some well-known delayed/cancelled games, has the most recent discussion of Microsoft’s biggest MMO failure: Mythica. I mourned the game’s loss (big time) lo these many years ago, 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.

I may have been a bit harsh with that ‘douche jock’ crack, but it really is hard 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 US and EU they’ve paid off.

So why cut Mythica? Really? It would have done fine, and might have even done really 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 (sigh) 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.

True Fantasy Live Online’s cancellation makes even less sense to me. It was a gorgeous title that could have not only opened up the Xbox platform for MMOs but also broken down the barrier between MS and the Japanese development culture. That barrier, ultimately, is why TFLO was shut down, at least according to Wikipedia:

Relations between the two companies soon began to spiral out of control as Level-5 struggled to meet the demands required by Microsoft, who in turn grew frustrated at the lack of progress being made on the game … Level-5 President and CEO Akihiro Hino stated in a Japanese interview that the poor relations between his company and Microsoft, partially due to the latter’s inexperience in dealing with Japanese developers, was one of the major reasons behind True Fantasy Live Online’s cancellation.

As recently as early this year Hino said he’ s interested in working on the project some more. The CEO of the company is invested enough to rez a several year old project, a project that MS was too short-sighted to fully explore. Hey … given Level 5’s high-profile current-gen console title, I wonder who they’d end up working with if TFLO ever gets off the ground?

Sony’s Sweet Spot

Two things spell out Sony’s intentions in this space very, very well: the recent reorganization of SOE beneath SCEI (out from under Sony Pictures), and NCsoft’s announced intentions to work with Sony to bring products to the PlayStation 3. For all the terrible, insane, idiotic choices Sony has made over the last few years, their MMO chops are not something you can doubt. FFXI, PSU, EQOA … almost every MMO to come out on a console has hit a Sony platform.

NCsoft’s stake in this is really clear-cut. They want into the console market and need a partner. Lineage and Arena.net’s Guild Wars would be fantastic additions to the PS3, with a minimum of UI tweaks and adjustments to get them working. They have seekrit projects in the works as well, at least one of which I assume to be a purely console game. With their stated intention of working with Sony, I wouldn’t hold my breath to see that game on the 360 anytime soon.

Smedley claims that SOE’s move is purely functional. That may be so, but even if that’s the case the move has a lot of symbolism behind it. SOE has always been the Sony outsider, doing very much its own thing. My personal view is that MMOs and Massive-like games are kinda the future of all entertainment. Sony’s realignment here makes loads of sense. Bring the experts closer into the fold. Maybe watch them more closely. But most of all bring the MMO-style of thinking ‘in house’ so that ideas can percolate in the right directions. With a firewall between Sony Online and the rest of the company there was little chance of that kind of thinking making it into the correct brains.

It probably helps that SOE has two games committed to the PlayStation 3 platform already. Agency and Free Realms will both be bringing some of that new Sony Online thinking to the benighted console - a little glimmer of hope for their online offerings. Agency is a serious contender, and anyone interested in games has to be taking that game more seriously than Home at this point.

Beyond these corporate moves, Sony has two other things going for it on the MMO front. The PlayStation store and the Sony service itself is free. That’s a huge plus for companies wanting to put their games on the PS3 platform: no additional barriers. If a company like Nexon wanted to bring one of their games into the fold, they could offer a free download from the PlayStation store and never have to worry about their business model being disrupted.

The other thing going for Sony: they haven’t made a giant mess of every MMO they’ve previously touched. Microsoft’s got a reputation in the industry now. Speaking of Nexon, Mabinogi may be making its way to the 360. And, of course, Huxely is still (ever) in-development. Aside from those two, though … there’s just not much movement on that front anymore. Not surprising, given what’s happened in the past.

Without a big shakeup, I don’t see MMOs taking the world by storm on any platform this year or even in 2009. Someday there will be a big console MMO, though. One of these days we’re going to see a persistent online gameworld crawl to the top of the charts and take on the big boys with a controlpad. I’m laying odds that Sony’s going to have the lock on it. In the meantime, Microsoft, can you stop wrecking stuff up? Geez!