EA’s Frank Gibeau has revealed that the publisher is in deep thought on whether the upcoming Star Wars MMO could make it to consoles.
Warhammer Online is also getting the think tank treatment but SWTOR would prove perhaps more difficult as it is a ”BioWare-Lucas-built product”, EA is just a partner.
”We’re definitely looking at the opportunity to bring the MMO experience to console, without question,” Gibeau told Eurogamer.
”We’ve got this product, and we’ve got Warhammer at play,” he continued, ”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.”
No one has really come up yet with a formula to launch a full MMORPG on console systems, the closest any have gotten seems to be Age of Conan’s Funcom which have admitted to being more interested in their PC version for the time being.
”There is a set of business terms that have been worked out in terms of how the companies are going to relate, and so it’s a typical, standard relationship from that standpoint,” Gibeau stated, referring to LucasArts involvement. ”This is a BioWare-Lucas-built product, and EA is a partner in that because we own BioWare.”
Right now I’m sure many could care less on a console version of BioWare’s upcoming MMO and just want to get their hands on ANY version at all, seeing as how they’ve made it sound so yummy.