Star Trek Online goes casual?
Earlier today we brought you the news that Perpetual Entertainment may be disbanding. An update to a story on the Shacknews site indicates the company (along with the Star Trek Online project) may have been purchased outright. Along with that purchase, it seems, there will also be a change in the game's basic concept.
Here's the core of the update: Perpetual has been acquired by new ownership, reportedly a media company looking to use Star Trek Online to make its first major inroads into the video game market. Along with the acquisition comes a partial retargeting of Star Trek Online to what our source describes as a "more casual" experience, one which may potentially eschew subscription fees in favor of the practice of charging real money for optional in-game items, a practice popularized by various Korean MMOs.
The site says it has some evidence backing this up, in the form of a letter passed between certain groups. There's also been word of some Perpetual employees leaving the company because they're uninterested in the direction the new owners are looking to take the property. Only time will tell what kind of game will get made with the Star Trek license, but in the meantime which media company do you think this is? Is it one of the big networks - perhaps CBS looking to reacquaint itself with a familiar property? Or maybe one of the 'new media' giants like Yahoo! looking to branch out?
