Consoles, Horses, and Middle-Earth - Exclusive LOTRO Interview with Jeffrey Steefel

[Cody Bye]

Lord of the Rings Online may be the only massively multiplayer online game in the world where a journalist has the chance to ask questions about consoles and horses in the same interview. That's exactly what happened when Cody "Micajah" Bye sat down with LOTRO's executive producer Jeffrey Steefel in a recent conversation they had about the future of Turbine and Lord of the Rings Online. As part two of an interview double, we encourage our readers to take a look back at part one, but if all you want to hear about is the long and short of our four-legged friends, keep on reading!

“The environment is finally ready, and people may be ready now to utilize their consoles in different ways because of what they can do online. Conceptually, the Xbox 360 and the PS3 aren’t just items that standalone anymore. They’ve become part of the network, and that helps a lot,” he continued. “Final Fantasy XI was generally the most successful console MMO product, and it was well suited to that last-gen console market. While FFXI and all of the other console games did fairly well, in the grand scheme of things they were experiments. The console wasn’t ready, and the infrastructure around the console wasn’t ready.”

To read the rest of our exclusive LOTRO interview, click here!

[Lizante]

I predict a huge shift -- especially with our current economy. We won't be seeing a "meld" of PC and Console products to any great extent any time soon, IMO.

Jeff pretty much dodged the question about Rohan (as well as any and all challenges facing Turbine as it further develops LotRO), stating that Turbine has to pay attention and do it right. No kidding. Lots of mayonnaise and lettuce, but not much meat in this sandwich.