It feels criminal that there have only been three major games based on The Matrix series. Yeah, I'm not counting Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5 tech demo, The Matrix Awakens. In my eyes, The Matrix Online glimpsed a future where your digital alter ego stayed with you, and all it took was an internet connection to jack back in. Its ambitions were incredibly lofty in a time when social media barely existed, but perhaps too lofty for Sony Online Entertainment to fully realize.
But in this age of handheld consoles and increasingly powerful mobile gaming, it feels like technology has finally caught up with The Matrix Online's grand vision.
The modern handheld ecosystem is changing what we expect from gaming. Devices like the Nintendo Switch 2, Steam Deck, Android phones, and iPhones aren't that other place to play games anymore. Fully-fledged triple-A experiences exist on these platforms. I love the freedom of taking my ROG Ally to a friend's house and playing with them in the same room. This was such a blast while putting together my ARC Raiders review.
Yet, there's something about MMORPGs that feels tailor-made for portable gaming consoles. Their drop-in-and-go nature makes them perfect for quick sessions, whether you're settling in for a few quests on the couch or squeezing in some grinding on the train or bus. Unlike more traditional narrative-led adventures, they don't demand your full attention every time you boot them up. You can explore at your own pace, make progress on your terms, and step away whenever you want. It's why I love playing games like The Elder Scrolls Online or The Division Resurgence.
When I boot up Ubisoft's looter shooter, I'm not looking for a 100-hour commitment. I'm checking in. I'm seeing what's changed, completing a few missions, and jumping back out. This flexibility is what makes handhelds so compelling for this genre. The idea of checking back into a world that continues without you is exactly what made The Matrix Online so fascinating. Mega City didn't stop existing when you logged off. Characters had stories, players built friendships, and the world kept moving.
The simulation isn't just somewhere you visit; it's somewhere that continues without you. The countless programs inhabiting the Matrix all exist whether we're watching them or not. Long before cloud saves and cross-progression, The Wachowskis and Monolith were imagining a future where your digital identity could follow you anywhere. The Matrix Online's connected future wasn't created from nothing, though.
It expanded on ideas that the Wachowskis had already explored throughout the movies. When The Matrix arrived in cinemas in 1999, it tapped into a growing fascination with digital identities and virtual spaces. Gaming began to experiment with these concepts, too. Before Neo ever took the red pill, titles like Neverwinter Nights and Ultima Online were creating early versions of worlds where players could connect and inhabit characters alongside people from across the planet.
In The Matrix, Zion represented humanity's greatest social hub, a place where people connected face-to-face. It's not too different from modern gaming, where players can spend hours simply existing alongside others in Fortnite or Destiny 2's Tower rather than chasing a traditional objective. The difference is that these worlds no longer have to be anchored to PS5 or Xbox at your desk. These online spaces that once required a PC can now fit inside a handheld device, ready to be explored whenever and wherever players choose.
Here's the thing: I don't want a remake of The Matrix Online.
I don't think that's the answer, but there's an opportunity to expand on The Matrix series meaningfully through the MMORPG format. Handheld devices are the perfect place to explore that notion. To give you a better sense of The Matrix Online's legacy, over the last few months, I've spoken to former Monolith developers who helped bring The Matrix Online (MXO) to life, and their stories have reinforced just how ambitious that vision was.
"At the time, it was obvious that The Matrix Online was something special. The background setting of The Matrix was so rich with all the eccentric programs mimicking human behaviors, either for their own amusement or because they were programmed that way (whether they liked it or not). Plus all the philosophical baggage of what makes something real or the nature of free will in a deterministic world," says Eric Ford.
Ford worked on the Live Events Team for MXO, creating in-game stories, puzzles, and even stepping into the shoes of characters players would encounter throughout Mega City. Ford would act in real time, interacting with players to give them lore and story clues.
It's something that you don't really see today outside of RP servers for Rockstar Games juggernauts like Red Dead Redemption 2 or Grand Theft Auto 5. Ford notes that "needing enough actors online 24/7 to make the world feel alive for players in every timezone on every server instance takes a lot of staff."
However, this is what made MXO different. Ford tells me that "expanding that setting into something that felt like a living and breathing city populated by players, scripted NPCs, and semi-scripted improv actors was an incredible feat." Ford puts it best when he likens it to a place where we unplug and embrace other worlds.
"If anything, it was more like Disneyland, where familiar characters might surprise you around the corner and offer a glimpse of some bigger adventure that leads you back into the scripted experience of the rides and their animatronic NPCs." I'm curious about how Ford's interactions would come to fruition. Is it discussed beforehand? Or is it in the heat of the moment? It's a mixture of both.
He shares that "the other devs and I often would sit in a random bar, church, hideout, or club, waiting for players to walk in and feel like they'd discovered something they weren't supposed to find." To keep the illusion of immersion intact, he adds that he "usually had dossiers for the most active players at my desk so that I could reference their character's roleplay in our conversations, making them feel like they were part of an actual living world that recognized their existence."
To build Mega City, MXO artist Kevin Kilstrom fills me in on the task of making a faithful rendition of The Matrix's world. "We had a lot of freedom to create what we wanted, but at the same time, we were all huge Matrix fans and wanted to replicate what was on screen into the game world as best we could." That attention to detail matters because The Matrix Online wasn't just asking players to visit Mega City; it wanted them to believe they belonged there.
Kilstrom says, "I had the movies playing in my office all day, every day for reference." In the offices of Monolith, they "were all Matrix fans; we pretty much knew what worked and what didn't fit into the Matrix world so we didn't have to deal with redoing assets based on feedback from Warner Brothers or the Wachowskis with the exception of the actor's likenesses," Kilstrom relays to me.
Towards the end of MXO's lifespan, one developer was one of the last full-time employees keeping it alive. Reflecting on the game, Ben Chamberlain iterates that it wasn't easy, but the passion at Monolith was unparalleled. "It was a lot of work, and it could be stressful, and there could be drama, but mostly it was a lot of fun and very satisfying as a developer to be able to create some form of content immediately and to get feedback from the players immediately."
MXO also comes from a time when Hollywood was still in the early stages of exploring how it could get more from its biggest franchises. Chamberlain gives me a peek behind the scenes. "It was exciting at the time to have that Hollywood connection, to be able to get a peek at the movie scripts in progress […] I still remember The Wachowskis coming by and going around to everyone's office to say hi, which was fun."
The biggest difference between the game's 2005 launch and today is that The Matrix Online no longer sounds like science fiction. We already carry devices that keep us connected to Instagram thirst traps, TikTok brainrot, or Twitter doomscrolling. The idea of always being plugged in has become completely normal, for better or worse.
In the years since MXO went offline, players are still finding new ways to interact with it. One savvy Redditor has even managed to emulate the game on an Android phone. For me, that feels strangely fitting because mobile devices have always been part of The Matrix's DNA.
Everyone wanted one of those Samsung slide phones. Mobiles are also a meaningful inclusion, not just as a matter of speaking to someone, but what they offer in The Matrix simulation. Access to exits, blueprints, weapons, and vehicles. All requested in an instant and downloaded into your consciousness through your operator.
While The Matrix Resurrections opts to use mirrors instead, noting leaps in technological advancements in the 60 years since Neo's demise in Revolutions, it feels fitting that a Matrix MMORPG should find a home on mobile, too.
What made MXO exciting wasn't simply that it was an MMO, but that its rendition of Mega City captured a part of The Matrix series we had only experienced through the eyes of other characters. In MXO, you were uncovering aspects of The Matrix we previously could only dream of. As an absolute lore nut for this series, I can't tell you how much it blew me away that Resurrections made story choices from MXO canon.
MMOs have changed dramatically over the last two decades, and players expect something very different in 2026 than they did in 2005. What lessons can a new Matrix game take from this?
When I ask Ben Chamberlain whether a new Matrix game could work today, he points out just how much the world has changed since the films first arrived. "Given that we're far more networked now and everyone with a cell phone is already 'jacked-in' 24/7 pretty much, unless you're doing a specifically retro thing, then you have to be able to take that and run with it." Kevin Kilstrom sees that potential too, even if he's realistic about the chances of any developers revisiting the series.
"I think a handheld Matrix game would be fun, and I think the property lends itself to making something great in that space. I'm not sure if it could be done at this time, unfortunately. The process and landscape of making video games has changed so much since I was in the thick of it."
If it were to happen, a fresh Matrix game could make handheld devices integral to the experience, rather than just a platform the game runs on. Enter The Matrix includes a fun hacking mini-game that acts as the game's cheat menu. It's a neat way to fold in more aspects of the movies while making it an interaction, rather than simply inputting codes. It'd be great to see developers think about The Matrix's universe in the same way.
Eric Ford believes "the story of The Matrix is more relevant today than ever before. We're confronted with an onslaught of misinformation and fake imagery every day that leaves us questioning what is real. We have machines pretending to be real people, whether for corporate marketing or scams."
He suggests the next entry should explore corners of the universe that the films only hinted at. "I would love to see a Matrix game explore the perspective of a newly exiled program navigating the city, caught between the authoritative machines trying to delete them, the competing gangs of exiled programs, and the human survivors desperate to broker deals."
We saw pieces of these ideas in Resurrections. The city of IO, a fresh start for humanity following the destruction of Zion. This is the Matrix game I want to play. Not a remake of MXO, and not another retelling of the films. Twenty-one years later, The Matrix Online feels less like a forgotten MMO and more like an experiment that arrived too early, confined by borders and boundaries. The technology wasn't quite there, but that's not the case anymore.
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