While speaking at GDC Austin, Turbine's VP of product development Craig Alexander provided insight on why the Lord of the Rings Online developer chose consoles for their upcoming MMO. Describing consoles as an untapped market with fewer potential competitors and up to $2 billion in revenue potentially available, Alexander said consoles are designed to be more accessible and playable than PC, and also they're more social than the PC platform. As Eurogamer reports, he even said consoles were the "superior" platform for MMOs:

Perhaps more surprising is just how committed the company is to bringing its next MMO project to console. While many believe that the PC is the natural home to the genre, Turbine disagrees. Alexander mentioned that the same arguments were made about in-depth sports sims and the FPS genre, but now market leaders like Madden and Call of Duty all have far larger installed bases of players on the consoles.

Alexander said that the evolution of the PC games market is being mirrored on console, and it is only a matter of time before the MMO development scene shifts to PS3 and Xbox 360.

Lending weight to his argument, Alexander reeled off a number of RPG-related facts: namely that Mass Effect, Fable II and Fallout 3 have all sold in excess of three million units, and that, at launch, Oblivion sold to over 50 per cent of the Xbox 360 installed base. In Turbine's view, the appetite for adventuring is there on console, and MMOs are the last piece of the puzzle.

Turbine's certainly taking a nontraditional path with their MMO. The article also states that they're developing for PS3 as the lead platform (rather than the easier to code for Xbox 360) because the PS3 has a number of unique technical challenges that once overcome, should result in better code for all platforms.

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