Console MMOs can work, says Kim

Shane Kim, former general manager of Microsoft Game Studios (MGS) and current corporate vice president at the company, has said MMOs can work on the Xbox 360.

He believes that, despite the epic failure of True Fantasy Live Online and Marvel Universe Online, the future can be MMO-shaped for console players.

"I'll admit MGS has not had success in the MMO space, and that happened under my leadership, so I take full responsibility," Kim admitted to Edge magazine.

"It's a tough and challenging space that's evolving all the time - a lot of shifting sands. We haven't been able to crack the code."

Microsoft was originally going to publish Marvel Universe Online as a first-party title, planned as an Xbox 360-to-PC cross-platform title - but it got canned.

True Fantasy Live Online was in development for the original Xbox by Level-5, but 'complications' led to this getting binned as well.

Kim lamented: "Game development is hard enough as it is - in the MMO space you're talking an even bigger investment, basically double. So it does add that layer of complexity - we just haven't found that right mix.

"...I think we've made the right decision not to proceed with those things like the Marvel MMO. And that's tough, both for customers looking forward to it and teams working on it. That said, we haven't been successful, but there's nothing to say those titles can't be successful on 360."

NCsoft, the successful South Korea-based MMO firm, has savaged Microsoft's Xbox Live service for being too closed for an MMO to work properly. NCsoft has gone the other way, currently working on a game for the PS3.

The lack of a standard hard drive is also a big problem for potential 360 MMOs.

"There's a lot of ongoing work," Kim said. "I think those are real challenges, and I know that our third-party folks want to enable all kinds of content and we work very hard to create a stable and secure environment on Xbox 360 and that's where you see that tension.

" I'm sure we can solve that problem though in a way that is good for MMO developers and customers because we want that content: and we're getting very close. But we're late with that, and we feel bad about that."