Sony to Take All MMOs to Consoles
In an interview with MTV Multiplayer, Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley talked about Sony's upcoming plans for MMOs. There's not much talk about Home, the upcoming console-based virtual world, but he did add note that all of SOE's future MMOs would appear on consoles and, possibly, the PSP. The reasoning--the chance to bring in a whole new audience--I think may be partially relevant for virtual worlds as well.
"I think they’re going to introduce a lot of new people [to MMOs]," said Smedley. "Studies show that a lot of people who have consoles also have PCs. However, they also show that most of the people that have a console play their console as their primary gaming device. Though I think what’s going to happen is you’re going to see a whole new generation of players that have been playing 'Resistance' now start getting introduced to MMOs. I think it’s going to be a cool way for them to experience games that have been on the PC for a while, but have a totally different kind of gameplay on the console."
The closest example for our space is SOE's own upcoming Free Realms, a free-to-play virtual world aimed at tweens. Free Realms will debut as a PC game with the console version coming about six months later.
The kids and tweens virtual worlds space is hardly slouching. We've often looked at the pure number of companies getting into youth virtual worlds as a sign of strong growth. And the users are there as well: in the same week, K Zero released research showing 250.5 million registered accounts in the 5-15 space and Pew reported that 10% of American teens use virtual worlds. Pew also reported, though, that 86% of teens use consoles to play games on (though that includes online and off-) compared to 73% using desktops or laptops.
The ease of access and lower barrier to entry for games on a console (once it's in the house, of course) could make them appealing for virtual worlds. If the Wii Internet browser supported them, I'd imagine Web-based kids virtual worlds could be a killer app. The issue of monetization would still be a challenge--more I think for Nintendo than the virtual world publishers--but the ability to put Club Penguin on the living room TV is pretty appealing.
It seems like there are too many big ifs to worry about it too much for third-party virtual worlds, but I think it's defintiely worth following the transition of first-party virtual worlds and MMOs, like Free Realms, to see how users react.
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