NCsoft is showing no signs of slowing down even after the big release of Tabula Rasa, and with NCsoft America under Chris Chung's management, massive games are inbound. In his latest interview, Chung talked about making PS3 titles, improving customer experience, and extending NCsoft's domination in Japan. Check out the full article for more details.

The older brother of Lord British, NCsoft North America CEO Robert Garriott, is leaving his post to pursue the MMORPG giant's global business development and planning side of things. Check out the full article for more details.

JoyStiq managed to score an interview with NCsoft boss Richard Garriot and Executive Producer Brian Clayton. The talk revolved mostly around the MMORPG industry and their (NCSoft) plans to support the PlayStation 3 with MMO-type titles. Their latest project - Tabula Rasa - was also touched; and surprisingly, they also signified plans to dabble on developing for the PlayStation Portable in the future.

According to Clayton, they're looking at a number of ways on how to beef up the PSP games frontline. A fully immersive and working MMO for the said handheld isn't that farfetched, with Clayton saying that they "see a number of opportunities with the PSP as a standalone MMO or as an extension to our full-blown MMOs on PC and PS3". Hmm... MMO game on PSP, sounds good 'ey? Their plans are best summed in this quote:

I would argue that developing a handheld MMO could be the largest challenge in game development. For example, the game needs to be developed from the onset to address limited communication tools, screen real estate and controls, which are all intrinsic to providing a quality MMO experience. We have a number ideas and solutions to address the above-mentioned concerns, but can't go into those details right now.

The full article awaits after the jump!

As promised, we've got the second part of the Voodoo Extreme's DICE Summit interview with Ultima Online">Richard Garriott (and a new screenshot to boot!). The transcript has already been posted and we're surprised that the brother, Robert Garriot, also decided to drop in a couple of thoughts during the interview.

As the sit-down progressed, they went on talking about the status of NCSoft through the years. It is, after all, the 10th anniversary of Ultima Online. So how far have they gone and what can they expect in the next couple of years, especially with Tabula Rasa?

Robert Garriot answers this with a quick recap of recent history, with UO setting the standard with its 50,000 sign-ups for beta and eventual 100,00 sold out during its first run. And then EverQuest came out and flushed UO to the side. And eventually, more games came out, each of them surpassing the 100,000 mark of UO.

Richard Garriot then continues the conversation and brings it over to Lineage - yet another market hit. It's even reported that one out of ten people in Korea have a Lineage II account. They go on with talking about market saturation and what it takes for a "next-gen" MMO to survive in the cutthroat battlefield of online accounts - including sticky reticles and more gameplay mechanics.

Check out the full interview found behind the "Read" link below.

GameDaily Biz sat down with the other Garriott, Robert, NCSoft North America CEO and brother to Richard HRH Lord British Garriott (guess they both didn't quit), to talk about Tabula Rasa, microtransactions (*gasp!*), and a bunch of other stuff. Long three-page interview. Can we concentrate instead on TR and the microtransaction bits?

Obviously Brother Richard is trying to change the way we look at and play MMOs with Tabula Rasa, and when Brother Robert describes the game along the lines of a shooter title. Finding traditional MMOs ho-hum boring, what attracts Robert to TR is that it is, in many respects, a shooter. You hide behind obstacles like a shooter, you take your shots like a shooter... only doing so with a bunch of other people and in a deep game system like in MMOs.

Microtransaction's turn. NCSoft will be looking at several micropayment models for their games. The real question they're asking is, what model to use. Think about it: they've got Guild Wars, that's essentially pay once, play for life, he observed. They've got other games that live off subscriptions. They've got coming games that use NC Coin micropayments.

How would this play to Tabula Rasa? We don't know - Robert offers no clues in that direction. Given the variety of weapons and equipment in the game, it's not too hard to imagine either an online shop for equipment, or at the least allowing equipment exchanges among players (with the right price, of course), but that does run into a certain multiplayer taboo concerning ubers. It's also easy to imagine a Guild Wars model of pay-once, but that's certainly taking a big risk with a very much radical new MMO property.