Online gaming....runaway Juggernaut?

[quirky]

Think back to the "Bella Guide"... the most important factor was the ease of setting up (basically, plugging it into the telly!) That's about the sum of the technical prowess of most "normal" people.

Online gaming will never, ever be so mainstream that single player games will disappear. Hell, I'm a fairly tech savvy person and I baulk at the thought of "home networks" and routers just to play a few games. Give me plug in and play Zelda,GTA3, etc anyday

[SharkAttack]

If online console gaming was or will be profitable then why hasn't pc online gaming made a fortune yet, considering most that will bother with consoles online will already have a pc online?

[Wozza]

If online console gaming was or will be profitable then why hasn't pc online gaming made a fortune yet, considering most that will bother with consoles online will already have a pc online?

What the online consoles (certainly X-Box Live) offer over their PC counterparts is ease of use. People are easy to find, games easy to set up, communication via headsets the norm. No more needing the latest patches, maps etc (at least not at the moment). With consoles it's plug and play. Everyone has the same platform and the same game. Everyone's using the same controllers/headsets etc. The other benefit at the moment is the fact it's broadband only, so you're going to be playing with people of same connection speeds.

Give it a few more years when BB in the UK is as available as it's Stateside and the prices have dropped, and I think we'll find that Online Gaming is the norm.

[Flojomojo]

Give it a few more years when BB in the UK is as available as it's Stateside and the prices have dropped, and I think we'll find that Online Gaming is the norm.

That's hardly the case in the US. Yes, pretty much everyone who wants a fast connection can get one (DSL, cable, or satellite if all else fails) but I think the market is pretty much saturated. Not everyone wants to be hooked up to the net 24/7 (don't ask me why not ).

The press has been hyping online as the next frontier, but that's simply because there's nothing else to wank off about. Check out this list of "innovations" to see how far we've come. We now have as standard equipment/features on all cheap consoles:

huge, cheap data storage on optical drives
fast, solid-looking 3D
analog controllers
portable savegames
digital, high quality sound
high resolution graphics
multimedia (movies, music, pictures) on demand

Since "gameplay" is so nebulous, they're letting the technology lead the trends. Since HDTV deployment has stalled, online is the next logical step. It's a little farther along than HDTV, but there are still economic and geographic barriers.

It's cool to be able to talk to someone as you play them at Streetfighter, even though you're far apart from each other. But where's the real revolution? Unreal, Ghost Recon, SOCOM, Moto GP -- same old stuff. I'd like to play something a little more social or intellectual. Is the online console experience able to deliver anything like that?

IMHO, online isn't a fad, nor is it going to replace everything else. It's like 3D graphics -- once unattainable, now no longer impressive.

[Popo]

I'm not joking.

There is no money to be made from online gaming. Nintendo know this which is why they are letting everyone do all the work for them. Similarly Sony offer the facility for network connectivity but even their actual online gaming content is very limited.

Only Microsoft have shown any real commitment to it and how many users do they have? 700,000 in 9million? And Xbox has far more technically minded players that have the nuance to be able to do it than any of the other consoles out there.

The point is that no-one cares about it. Even with the Sims, the best selling game ever, being online no-one has bought into it.

The reason for this being that people don't like paying extra fees to play games. Fees are the only way for anyone to make money and if people don't want to pay them, they'll have to make it free. But that won't make them any money. It's a viscious circle and one nobody can escape.

Microsoft can pump as many billions as they like into Xbox Live. They'll never get those figures into the black.

Not ever.

You make a very good point, but there are other ways to pay for running servers and bandwidth usage, such as advertising (be it ads that pop up before you connect to play, or product placement inside games, there are many options there) which could suppliement small annual fees such as Xbox Live!, which I'm sure the majority will agree is a very fair amount of money to pay for the level and broadness of service offered.

I think as online gaming becomes more widespread, the costs will go down - in places like South Korea BB connections are staggeringly cheaper than they are over here. As demand goes up, prices go down to capitalise on the interest, and this will happen with bandwidth and other internet resources over time.

May I be horribly crushed from above somehow if I'm wrong, but never the less, the costs of the infrastructure has to come down before it becomes marketable to the general public - just compare to things such as cars and TVs. Online gaming wont be marketable until people realise this, and the demand goes up.

[Popo]

If online console gaming was or will be profitable then why hasn't pc online gaming made a fortune yet, considering most that will bother with consoles online will already have a pc online?

Take Counterstrike as an example here - now, I don't know the facts behind it, but organisations such as Blueyonder and Jolt have done and continue to offer free public servers for people to join. If for whatever reason this was costing them alot of money, it's clear that they woudln't do it... but yet, week on wekk, month on month, year on year, these servers remain to be offered freely. why? Your guess is as good as mines, but there is obviously something profitable about it, otherwise they wouldn't bother their arses.

Couldn't this business model be transferrable to console online gaming?

[Flojomojo]

I don't think XBOX Live costs M$ that much to support, especially compared to stuff like Windows Update and Technet. They'd be smart to look on it as advertising. Today's gamers are tomorrows IT purchasers.

Most of the stuff on XBOX Live is peer-to-peer anyway. The central servers are used for matchmaking and recordkeeping. Just like the Microsoft Gaming Zone, which has been free for years. I think our XBOX Live fees are currently feeding their marketing machine, not network equipment.

Online doesn't have to be expensive. Running servers for something like Everquest might be, but there's a hefty profit margin in there as well, don't worry.