Austin GDC is MMO Hat-Trick

Mark Wilson — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 13:41:29 MDT

Austin's Game Developers Conference has just added another keynote to the roster, that of Square Enix executive officer Hiromichi Tanaka (of Final Fantasy XI fame). He will be speaking about developing multiplatform MMOs, a topic that should be interesting to the market today. This keynote is in addition to those already in the works from World of Warcraft co-creator Michael Morhaime and Habbo Hotel creative voice Sulka Haro.

It looks like the year of the MMO at this year's GDC. Live it up, Fahey. Live. It. Up.

Austin GDC Adds Keynote From Square Enix's Tanaka [gamasutra]

PS3 Sucks For PC Porting

brownlee — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 07:00:41 MDT

Are you one of those tiresome people who responds to every gaming forum thread with: "*yawn* I'll wait for the PC port!" Well, looks like you'll need to uncan a new anti-console canard when the PS3 hits, because PC ports on PS3 titles look bleak.

Square Enix producer Hiromichi Tanaka on porting PS3 games:

The Xbox 360 operating system shares enough similarities with Windows, he said, so that porting the Windows version of FFXI to the 360 was a fairly quick task. A PS3 version of FFXI, on the other hand, would require redeveloping the game almost from scratch, a process that Tanaka estimated would take two or three years.

We're sure keeping PS3 exclusives exclusive is important to Sony, a bulletpoint on their list of justifications for a convoluted and impenetrable development platform. Still, bad news for gamers who don't want to spend 600 bucks on a cybertronic waffle iron Blu-Ray player.

Tanaka also mentions that Square Enix is working on a PS3 and Windows Vista cross platform MMORPG, if you still think they can handle that sort of thing after the execrable Final Fantasy XI. Florian Eckhardt

Report: Square Enix working on PS3, Vista MMORPG [Yahoo! Games]

Kotaku: hiromichi tanaka

Austin GDC is MMO Hat-Trick

PS3 Sucks For PC Porting