Warhammer 40k: Dark Millennium Online

And that brings us to the MMO. We call it 'The MMO' at THQ. It's Warhammer 40k Dark Millennium Online.

At this show is the first time we are showing any capture of this thing. There's no CG in here, it's all gameplay. We just went into the game and captured a bunch of stuff; and being an MMO player myself I am fully confident we are going to be incredibly successful with this game. I would venture to say it will change the face of THQ.

Let's take a look at this.

<E3 2010 trailer audio plays>

Yeah, so in addition to that there are about two or three things that I can't announce yet that we haven't announced. But what we're showing you is the next two years in core, aside from two titles I cannot talk about.

<snip>

Can you talk a little about the size of the budget around Dark Millennium and what kind of risk/reward you're looking at when you're making a decision on doing an MMO in this environment?

First part is what's the cost? Well this game has been in pre-production for 3 1/2th years now. It has been very delicately built and very carefully built by people who have built MMOs before, in Austin at NCSoft and they've learned from those mistakes. This is an extremely crafted experience. We are using our Montreal studio to build a lot of the content and at tremendous savings up there.

We also have <?> in China that will build some content. But it is all really controlled at digital. The production budget is 43 million dollars, which is... I am really excited about that. And the model that you asked about, the game is being set up right now where it can go subscription, micro-transaction, free-to-play.

My hunch would be, and this is just me guessing, would be that there would be a combo subscription and micro-transaction. But we have built this so we can be ready for where the market is when the game ships and have the most effective monitization. But the experience has a different kind of combat, it has much more... many more vehicles in it that you and your buddies can get in a tank and roll out together.

It's got four races with more races coming, it has... this is being built by people who just adore MMOs and I'm one of them. So, I'm really excited about this and if Brian could talk about how many subscribers we need to make our numbers.

As we get more into people talking about MMOs, we have learned from other people's mistakes. We started with a very small team, proving out all the game mechanics and systems before ramping up. This will give us the leg up... <?>. The other thing is the people often tell us what they have spent over a period of time.

The thing that excites me about the MMO is if we are right on it, and I think we are, you will be looking at a 5-7 year life, over which you'll be adding new content all the time. So when people say they cost 60 million, 80 million, 100 million to build an MMO the not-so flip response is we can only hope so cause that would mean it is a tremendous success. The last thing is, like the film industry, its not what's in the budget its what's on the screen.

We think we are putting the true next-generation MMO on the screen for a cost that makes sense, the business model works and
with a very modest number of subscribers we are looking at a truly global product; which helps the business model tremendously. So we are really looking forward to this product when it comes out in a couple of years.

<snip>

It's a very efficient team down there in Austin Texas. What you are seeing there is capture from play sessions. So some people thought "Wow, did we show too much?", I don't think so. I kind of wanted to shake up Blizzard a bit and show that thing. There are a lot of things they would have to do to do the things we are showing in there. They are awesome, don't get me wrong, but we're in the game.