Just saw this on F13.net:
In a strategic move to closely align itself with the strong growth of the worldwide online gaming market, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) announced today that Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) will report to Kazuo Hirai, President and Group CEO, SCEI, effective April 1, 2008.
SOE is moving from the movie side of the business to the side that makes the Playstation 3 and its games. It really does make sense. I think we can expect, though, that any future SOE game for domestic release will come out for both the PC and the PS3. We know DC Universe Online and The Agency are both coming out for the PS3. I imagine Free Realms is as well, though I wonder how many children have PS3s available vs the ubiquity of PCs. LittleBig World is PS3 *only*, as is @Home (though I don’t think those last two had anything to do with SOE).
The biggest question has to be, what happens to the PC-only games? They certainly won’t be back-ported to the PS3 unless they had Halo or WoW numbers to make it worthwhile. However, it’s also clear that they won’t give up a brand like EverQuest easily.
Does this mean there could be an EverQuest 3 for the PS3? What was unlikely a day ago seems certain now.
There have been unsubstantiated rumors of an EQ port of some sort on the PS3 since the PS3 was announced, including some supposed screenshots. Perhaps it’s just the wishful thinking of EQOA players hoping for a transition path from the PS2 to the PS3.
It’s possible, then, that EQ/PS3 has been under development for some time already. It would almost have to be, since you wouldn’t want to introduce a new MMO in the middle or toward the end of a hardware cycle.
Would they really make a third sequel? In my opinion, SOE knows better. EQ2 was hard enough to make a success, EQ3 seems like it would be impossible.
What if they made a game set in Norrath with all the lore we have, but you could play it single player or do special custom “raid” maps with 6-12 players? Or imagine Norrath in PS3 graphics.
Just adventures set in the world. Doesn’t have to be the whole game, just the best parts, and more fluid and adaptable.
They could definitely do it — and maybe it’s already being done. I haven’t played their current adventures since I don’t have a PS3, but I bet they could come up with something that could wow us.
I hope they do make something that is to EQ2 what EQOA was to EQ1. I had a lot of fun in EQOA, and despite its shortcomings in the combat depth area it is one of my favorite MMO experiences. The community there was really tight and the community team was very receptive to my RP guild running events on the server. They would even help us out from time to time. EQOA was different enough from EQ1 to be cool, one of the biggest differences was it was seamless. I would love to see something like this, especially if it was more like what Tipa suggested with lower numbers and a mostly single player concentration.
I don’t think doing a game passed on eo2 would be that great of a idea as eq2 was well kind of a flop in the eyes of soe according to some.I think making a expansion to frontiers would be the better idea has we are still hundreds if not thousands of years being eq(pc).If they did this a lot of dead accounts would become active and almost a guarantee tons of new players.Long Live EQOA