Casually browsing through job listings can be a valuable source of information in the MMO world. Today, while doing just that, MMORPG.com’s Richard Cox came across a listing on the Cryptic Studios website advertising for a Playstation 3 Engine Programmer:

We are currently looking for a full time PS3 Engine Programmer.

Are you interested in a challenge? We have developed a flexible, cutting edge MMO platform to power games like Champions and Star Trek Online. It runs on PC and XBOX 360 - now we want to support PS3 too. Are you an expert PS3 coder? Do you enjoy squeezing every last drop of performance and spare memory out of the system?

Every day you could be:

• Exploiting SPU parallelism to get the maximum performance out of the system.
• Extending existing systems to adapt to the ever-changing needs of a massively multiplayer game.
• Collaborating with innovative art and design teams.

What you need to work here:

• The ability to communicate clearly and concisely.
• Extremely proficient in C programming and debugging. You must be a brilliant programmer.
• Thorough understanding of the PS3 - SPUs, RSX, SPURS multi-threading, etc.
• Love videogames - Console AND MMO.

Now, this isn’t the first time that the media has heard rumblings on this matter. N4G, for example, published an article some time ago quoting Cryptic designer Aaron Safronoff as saying that a PS 3 version would be something that the company was interested in, but would not be launching with. A few weeks ago, VG247.com cited a tenuous extra “s” at the end of the word console as a clue that the game was indeed being released for the PS 3. since we already knew that the game was releasing for XBox360, the logic behind this is that by saying that the game was being developed for consoles, the Cryptic rep was speaking about the PS3 as well. Direct questioning from that site led to the cryptic (pardon the pun) reply that “it’s coming to console”.

In a Comic Con New York interview with MTV.com , Cryptic’s Design Director Bill Roper told the website that it is more difficult to move to the PS 3 than the Xbox 360, and there were licensing concerns, but that the company would like to work with “everybody”, presumably meaning Sony and Microsoft... We’re a long way out yet from MMOs on the Wii.

Now, we aren’t quite ready to call this one confirmed just yet, but the evidence is starting to mount and given that Cryptic has moved beyond the “want to” phase and into the spending real money to hire someone phase, we wanted to report the news just the same.

For the record, MMORPG.com contacted Cryptic Studios in search of a statement of confirmation:

“We believe that MMORPGs have a strong future on not just the 360, but also the PS3,” we were told by Chief Creative Officer Jack Emmert.

For whatever the reason, the studio is obviously not ready to put a big fat confirmation sign on this one and remains, as their name implies, cryptic about the whole situation (pun most certainly intended).