14 DAY TRIAL // The upcoming Defiance is part of a small number of titles in the MMO genre that will launch on current-generation home consoles and one of the leading developers working on it hopes that the game will eliminate some of the preconceptions that players have about them.
Nathan Richardsson, the execution producer of Defiance, tells The Official Xbox Magazine that, “It’s at the point where ‘MMO’ is very much associated – and even stigmatised – with a certain men-in-tights deep-and-wide subscription type of game.”
Of course, most MMOs launching at the moment have ditched the subscription model and hope to broaden their audiences by offering most if not all the content for free, with microtransactions offered for those who want a wider experience.
The developer adds, “There is no denying that doing MMOs on consoles is difficult. When they were envisioned, the massive online model with aggressive evolution of the game and dynamic universes wasn’t part of their core purpose. This has discouraged a lot of developers, going the paths of less resistance and sticking to other platforms.”
When Sony announced the PlayStation 4, the company talked about attracting and supporting new game experience.
Soon after that, Bungie announced that Destiny, the shooter with MMO elements it was working on, would be offered on the new hardware platform.
Defiance takes place in a future when humanity shares the planet with a number of alien races and focuses on player skill with a weapon rather than simply on under-the-hood calculations.
Defiance is set to launch on the PC, the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft during April and will be accompanied by a Syfy television series that uses the same name.
The events of the MMO will influence the way the episodes progress, creating one of the first trans-media experiences for the genre.