No Discussion About Star Wars: The Old Republic on Consoles

We already know that Star Wars: The Old Republic, the MMO designed by BioWare with help from LucasArts, is the most expensive project ever developed by publisher Electronic Arts. We also know that the overall ambition is to create a gaming experience able to draw enough players to challenge World of Warcraft from Blizzard for the title of king of the subscription-based MMO genre.

And one way to do that would be to bring The Old Republic to gaming consoles, like the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the PlayStation 3 from Sony, thereby assuring a bigger potential install base for the title.

But it seems that the developers at BioWare are not yet thinking about this possibility. Daniel Erickson, who is a lead designer and story writer working on Star Wars: The Old Republic, told CVG in an interview that “I have no idea if it's possible. I'd have to ask our tech director,” adding, “I can tell you that it's not anything that we've even discussed. There is no-body anywhere in Bioware laying the groundwork for that because we have a very large complicated game to ship first.”

The BioWare creator is also saying that the PC, for which The Old Republic has been confirmed, is the platform on which role playing games and, by extension, MMO titles with RPG mechanics feel most at home. Their love of the PC as a platform for video games is what made them develop their hit Dragon Age: Origins as a PC title first, then porting the resulting product to the Xbox 360 and to the PlayStation 3.

Erickson adds that the development of the Mass Effect series, where the protagonist talks to other characters, is what determined the team to also go for the full voice options for Star Wars: The Old Republic.