Following the $40 million investment , which Turbine has recently secured from the likes of Time Warner, the Lord of The Rings Online developer is already planning to use the money wisely to expand into the console market.

In an interview with MMORPG.com Turbine CEO Jim Crowley has said that: “These worlds are so rich and robust, we do want them to be shared across platforms, both for existing and future worlds.”

Indeed a job listing on Turbine's website calls for a Senior Console Engineer for an MMO for Xbox 360 or PS3, but what remains to be discovered is whether Turbine will use one if its existing IPs - Dungeon & Dragons Online or Lord of the Rings Online - or will they create a brand new franchise?

Out of the two franchises, it seems that as Lord of the Rings Online is relatively new into its MMO life cycle, Turbine probably wouldn't look just yet at porting the title. However, DDO has been around for two years now and we'd guess that with user figures proabably dwindling, a console port could be the right move for the franchise.

Indeed Joystiq has been doing a bit of digging around and found an interesting post over at the DDO forums, that states "DDO will be getting more and more focus from Turbine's marketing and PR teams over the coming months."

For the time being we can only speculate. We'll just have to wait to see what Turbine has up its wizard-like sleeve.

Source :: MMORPG.com