14 DAY TRIAL // Age of Conan is a very popular MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) set in the world of, you guessed it, Conan the Barbarian. Developed by the Norwegian studio Funcom it was released at the beginning of this spring to PC with an Xbox 360 version also announced but without a firm release date. Recently, Jørgen Tharaldsen, product director for Funcom, spoke to Strategy Informer about the highly awaited console version of this very popular MMORPG. He went on to say that although the company had a team working on the Xbox 360 version, the PC version was the main focus of Funcom due to the large number of players.
"Development on the Xbox 360 version is not our key priority as there are a massive amount of PC gamers already playing the game, and we rightly have the focus on them. While there is a dedicated specialist project team working on Xbox, the PC version will remain our top priority for now."
But don't worry, console gamers, the final version for the Xbox 360 will be completely patched and all of its bugs will be taken care of by the development team. "If anything I think that the console version is greatly benefiting from the many updates and improvements we are constantly making to the PC version, and the launch issues we had will only serve to make the Xbox version a much better experience."
He also stated that the development of an MMORPG for a console is quite difficult, much due to the limited interface capabilities and how the hardware can affect the experience. "Seeing how a console and a PC is inherently very different in control input, HD space, patching cycle, available memory and so on, there are naturally many challenges involved in this work, and while we have overcome many there are more to go, not just from a design and tech standpoint, but also from business, community and marketing. The time will come for MMO games, or similar experiences, to do great on the consoles though, and hopefully Conan will be one of the pioneers in that regard."
He also stated that due to a series of problems, the Xbox 360 version of Age of Conan will be delayed until 2009, but he didn't make any statement about a firm release date.