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General : Marvel MMO Defeated
Posted Feb 13, 2008 by Keith Cross
Rumors have been floating around for months about the demise of the Marvel MMO being developed by Cryptic Studios. The rumors have now been confirmed by Shane Kim, head of Microsoft Games Studios in a recent interview with the MTV Multiplayer Blog.
First, I asked if the game was truly canceled. He said: “I’ll confirm. Marvel and we have agreed to end development on the MMO. It was an amicable decision…. It’s just something that we felt that, for us and for them, it would be better if we ended development. Which is disappointing, because that had a lot of promise. But sometimes you have to make these decisions.”
Cue the natural follow-up: What went wrong?
“I don’t think it’s necessarily a case of what went wrong,” Kim told me. “I don’t know that that’s the right way to put it. For us we look at our priorities and all of the things we have to do. It’s a tough space. It’s a very competitive space. And it’s a space that’s changing quite a bit. …When we first entered into the development and agreement of the development of ‘Marvel Universe Online,’ we thought we would create another subscription-based MMO. And if you really look at the data there’s basically one that’s successful and everything else wouldn’t meet our level or definition of commercial success. And then you have to look [and say]: ‘Can we change the business model for that? Is that really viable given how far we are in development? And so forth. Does Marvel want to do that?’ There’s a whole bunch of factors.”
Read more here.
Poop
I knew it would be Microsoft's fault. No game studio should ever do business with them concerning a MMO.
I'm really bummed out it got cancelled. It was one of the games I looked forward to the most. Hell, for that matter, just about every MMO I get really excited about gets cancelled.
Hopefully it will still see the light of day.
(Yeah, just like True Fantasy Live Online saw the light of day again, riiiiight????)
I am frequently mocked on forums for expressing this particular opinion, so I just wanted to point out that here we have yet another industry insider saying that the subscription-based MMO model just isn't viable.
As the number of these games increases, the number of available subscribers doesn't rise accordingly. With WAR and AoC on the horizon, the $15/month market is tapped out. Any gains will come mostly from another game's losses. Does anyone, barring the WoW-is-popular-so-it-sucks crowd, really see a Marvel MMO cutting into the long established CoH/V or WoW subscriber base?
The nearly-done MMOs may stick to this old pricing formula, because changing something so fundamental would probably cause another groan-inducing delay. But I would guess that any companies in the early-to-mid stages of development on an MMO are giving strong consideration to alternative pricing models.
The $15/onth model is a dinosaur that doesn't yet know its days are limited.
Wrong, what you have is Microsoft being greedy bastards...again.
And I quote:
"And if you really look at the data there’s basically one that’s successful and everything else wouldn’t meet our level or definition of commercial success."
The bean counters at MS think because WoW has millions of customers and other mmorpgs don't, that WoW is the only success among failures. MS is saying "If we can't guarantee ourselves WoW numbers, then we won't bother." Hopefully, they'll stick to that thought and stay out of the mmorpg arena forever.
And this isn't because the SOE DCMMO is going to be such a huge hit...
The MMO industry is too full of startups, too many games out, etc. 2008 is going to be the year that the MMO industry sees more games close or never release than make it out.
"Mactrotranscams" are the new FOTM amongst developers now.
The subscription model is "failing" because failing publishers like SOE and NCSoft want MORE than $15 a month from you.
The RMT model will die soon as players realize it is a scheme to get even more money from you. Last year the WOW clone was the FOTM, now it's RMT.
Agreed 100%
i found it amusing to see the company that developers the only Super hero MMO (pay to play one that is) wanted to make another super hero MMO....it just went against all logic.
is this game over for cryptic studios? They sold COH to NCSoft. What projects do they have now?
This is what microsoft does how many mmos does this make now that they have got into dev then shut it down? 3-4? They pretty much screwed turbine years before that when they forced them to release ac2 6 months before it was ready and we all seen the result of that.Atleast turbine was smart though bought the AC franchise back and got the hell away from MS.I hope cryptic and marvel still make a mmo and it is huge just to make MS reexamine wth they are doing.They are gettin as bad as EA has always been.
Good question. They are rumored to have aquired the rights to take over (or begin again) the development of Star Trek Online. But that is ONLY rumor, and no one is talking officially.
But if the Marvel MMO was cancelled and they handed off CoX to NCSoft, just what has Cryptic been working on for the last 6 months?
oooh i just found this http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200802/N08.0213.1711.09335.htm
Well, console mmorpgs are VERY successful, so they should have a hit there. /sarcasm off
Any chance of getting this in English? Real writers aren't afraid to spell out abbreviations so the less hip can read the entire message.
Is it just me? Or are MMO's dying because they're no longer novel? When I got into EQ, it was revelatory. Now when I try a new game it's just another game with more of the same. The only thing that will change that will be something truly revolutionary, like some sort of truly immersive Matrix-like virtual reality. Until then, well I guess I'll just go back to tabletop games, they're more fun.
FOTM = Flavor Of The Month
Not sure that the rest is...
what so no marvel universe damn that game would have gone far!
Don't forget about Marvels role in this. One reason for the end of the Marvel MMO is that Marvel felt that it would diminish their brand. Its not all Microshaft. Marvel is as guilty of wrecking their own projects as MS is.
Also, Champions was a very cool pen and paper RPG back in the day. It played rather sluggishly but the concepts were cool and might make for a cool mmo. Ultimately I prefer niche mmorpgs rather than massive blockbusters. Niche games tend to be more original and less obligated to shoe-horn ridiculous features into the game while removing anticipated ones on the whims of the suits with big money.
Dev
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You're mocked for that opinion because it's a ridiculous opinion. The number of people playing online games has increased in vast numbers in a short time. That, coupled with the fact that the success of a particular entity has historically acted to invigorate the genre as a whole rather than undermine competitors just makes the entire sentiment one big failed justification for fandom of particular pricing models of all the absurd things.
marvel universe online was a mmo i was anticipating with bated breath. however, marvel research realized what i knew along; that most mmo guys are pocket-protecting geeks who can't get beyond swords and sorcerers fantasies long enough to pick a superhero comic book, let alone, play a superhero video game. that's the difference between the console loyalists and the mmo crowd, and that's why marvel games sell on consoles and wouldn't on a mmo platform. guys who are sports gamers like marvel comic books and marvel video games, mmo guys are rapped up in d&d, everquest, wow, lotr, and all the rest. it's unfortunate that i'm a mmo guy because the rest of you geeks are ruining the potential mmo game market for the rest of us.
Oh well, I'm a CoX fan anyways. I was worried that MUO would eat away at the customer base, no word on DC's MMO? i heard they were planning one of those also...
WoW sucks no matter how many people play it
well, no disrespect 2 the dc grp, but i've never been able 2 get it. what i'd like 2 c is sum of the best-sell'n fantasy novels bcum mmo, like terry goodkinds "sword of truth" series, or robert jordans "wheel of time". but that's just me.
you know, Wizards of the coast messed up by going with the world they made up for D&D online. they shoulda have based it in the forgotten realms. but they didnt
How very unfortunate. I was looking forward to that.