Austin, Texas is where worlds collide, where tech millionaires meet dairy farmers, and where the parallel dimensions offered by a half-dozen MMOs compete for server space.

With so many alternate realities overlapping, you have to expect a little blending around the edges: that’s why we aren’t surprised when our arrival at Sony Online Entertainment’s Austin studio sees us greeted at the door by both Superman and Darth Vader, albeit in cardboard cut-out form.

We’re here for Superman. For the past two years, SOE Austin has been quietly at work on a new MMO, which will take a Byzantine world of comic books and superheroes and turn it into DC Universe Online: an action title for the PC – and, more problematically, PS3.

Since Phantasy Star Online, no one’s managed to get MMOs to truly click on consoles; Austin is hoping that masks and capes will succeed where Final Fantasy and even its own EverQuest have previously failed.



There’s a lot about the DC universe that makes it an excellent license for MMOs: 70 years deep and nearly 4,000 characters wide (according to the Austin team, who have presumably done a headcount), it’s up there with Coca-Cola and penicillin in terms of worldwide recognition. But there are also things that make it difficult. Take character balancing, an issue that has kept school playgrounds abuzz since the ’30s in discussions over whether Batman would beat Superman in a fight (he would): there’s a design challenge of potentially game-breaking proportions.