When people are asked about the selling point of the PlayStation 3, you can expect to get a variety of answers. John Smedley, the president of Sony Online Entertainment, feels that MMOs may become one of these reasons in the future.

According to him, MMOs are going to be a real strong selling point for the PS3 in the long term. Smedley noted that the upcoming SOE developed MMO, The Agency, will not be on the Xbox 360 and that we can expect to see more games of this type on the PS3.

He noted that the video game industry now has become more mainstream and that MMO games are also benefiting from this upward boost. As an example, he pointed out sales today as compared to five years ago:

Think of the video-gaming industry five years ago. That's kind of where I think we're at. ... Five years ago, do you think Grand Theft Auto IV (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3) would have done $500 million [in opening-week sales]? To me, video games are just reaching the real mass-market now. That is going to translate to the MMO side of the business.

Finally, he also discussed the current demography of gamers who enjoy playing MMOs. He noted that while the market is predominantly male, this will even out in the future:

Right now it's about 85 percent male. I think it's going to be 50-50. You're going to see a lot more big name brands in it, including ones we're building. These games are as big as hit movies are right now.

Smedley made a number of interesting points regarding the arrival of MMOs on the PlayStation 3. It might be interesting to see what impact The Agency and other MMOs will have when they get released on consoles.