peaking to GamesIndustry.biz this week, Guild Wars developer Arena.net co-founder Jeff Strain has said that the business model used by Microsoft's Xbox Live service needs to be overhauled before the service will be attractive to MMOG developers.
Strain, who was a senior developer at Blizzard before leaving to set up Arena.net, believes that the business model used by Xbox Live is fundamentally not designed for the close relationships MMOG operators require with their players and community.
"Their whole goal is to encourage people to go and buy games on the shelf, then there's an online component for it," he explained. "But for us, when you buy it on the shelf, that's just the beginning of our relationship with you - and we want a direct connection with our customer so that we're always giving you new content, always supporting you directly. Xbox Live just wasn't really built, from a business standpoint, to support that."
Strain acknowledged that seeking to take the customer relationship away from the platform holder and back into the hands of the publisher or developer would be a difficult thing to negotiate, but he remains optimistic that both Microsoft and Sony will embrace the opportunity represented by the MMO market.