Right when the market seems to be saturated with “me too” fantasy MMO titles, another one emerges from the developmental primordial soup and starts gathering momentum. This time it’s the turn of Aion: The Tower of Eternity to emerge into the dual headbeams that are the MMO-playing population’s insatiable appetite for new content. But since we’ve had Lord of the Rings Online fail to gain a significant handhold on the cliff face of market share, [...]

Developers and publishers have for many years sought the holy grail of gaming: a reliable, recurring revenue stream. Traditional game development can be a high-risk business, with top class titles such as Halo 3 estimated to cost around $30 million. This cost can be shared and managed between the developer and publisher, with the balance of cost on each depending on the commercial agreements in place. Trouble is, there’s a large amount of risk involved [...]