When I last spoke to the lovely people at Turbine, I came away with a sense that Turbine was willing to go to that next level with their unannounced, but upcoming console MMO. While the details are still scant about it, a recent job listing picked up by Eurogamer indicates that Turbine is looking to port an existing MMO to consoles instead of creating a new property.
From the job listing:
…This engineer may be refactoring existing user interfaces or implementing completely new user interfaces for systems such as combat, skills, inventory, treasure, and social systems. While the focus of this role will be on user interface design and implementation, the engineer may also be required to augment or implement underlying game systems.
Of course, the key word is “may” in the above paragraph, yet the “Responsibilities” column clearly states that the potential employee must be able to “… augment existing user interfaces.” Couple that with the “[experience] with UI development on a console platform” line and it looks like a console MMO is go.
The only question is, will this title be Lord of the Rings Online or Dungeons and Dragons Online? Certainly the rest of Turbine’s properties would be too old for this generation of console players. What do you guys think it could be? Would you want it?
Published: Sep 29, 2008 09:08 am