Turbine Talks Console MMOs

17 Nov 2008 at 17:45:32 by Andy Alderson

Turbine's Jeffrey Steefel has told IncGamers about the challenge of developing an MMO for the console market.

Steefel is currently promoting the launch of the Mines of Moria expansion for Lord of the Rings Online, and we got the chance to ask him about Turbine's highly-anticipated console MMO. Despite remaining tight-lipped on specifics about the new project, Steefel did highlight some of the key issues facing the developer, including the controller/interface. 

"Oh yeah, it’s one of half a dozen fundamental issues and that’s what we’ve been working on for more than a year now," said Steefel. "The answer is that you can’t think of it as taking what you already do on the PC and “moving” it over to the console. The PC is great at managing large amounts of resources – e.g inventories, skills, weapons – as you can manipulate data with the keyboard and the mouse. The console is never going to have that."

Steefel also acknowledged the danger of dumbing down the MMO genre in the process of bringing it to a console.

"I think there is a risk, but there’s some things that are fun to do at a computer desk that really wouldn’t be fun in a sofa setting", he said. "It’s really more about what we want the sofa experience to be. What is it about an MMO that makes an MMO? Where do the two meet? That’s our process"

Check out the first part of our interview with Jeffrey Steefel here and stay tuned for part two.

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