Sony: A PS3 MMO could rival World of Warcraft

Monday 17th March 2008 - 17:00

Sony boss in Blizzard-beating ambitions and Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 screens

Never let it be said that Sony lacks ambition when it comes to conquering all corners of the games industry. Not content with fighting a losing battle against Nintendo in the handheld market and just about holding its own in the next-gen struggle against the Xbox 360 and Wii. Now it wants to take on the might and global dominance of the legendary PC MMO that is World of Warcraft.

Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley is the man at the company's helm who is determined to plot a course for the console that includes a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game . He was in buoyant mood when speaking to gamedaily.com about what chances a console MMO would have against the likes of WoW.

Smedley commented: "I absolutely do think we'll see that and in fact I think by having a stable platform where every customer has an online capable box is a huge, huge potential advantage in building an MMO because you've already got an online userbase. It's a massive advantage over the PC and we don't have to worry about graphics cards or things like that. It's going to be very big. Console online gaming in general I think is going to be one of the next huge phases of growth in the online gaming space."

We admire Smedley's optimism but perhaps history can teach a valuable lesson here. Sony was also the company behind the ill-fated MMO that was Star Wars Galaxies, a game that promised so much, ultimately delivered so little and has since been eclipsed into obscurity by the popularity of Blizzard's World of Warcraft. Will history repeat itself? We'll have to wait and see.

One game that we won't have to wait for too much longer is the hotly anticipated Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 from EA. Developed by EA Los Angeles, Red Alert 3 breaks new ground in the RTS genre, featuring a fully co-operative campaign while bringing back the series' light-hearted style and classic, action-oriented gameplay. A release is rumoured to be happening in April for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

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