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Game industry begins online experiment
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Posted by: Tweaker
After years of churning out mutant chimps and killer robots, the video game industry is set to embark on a whole new kind of adventure next week.
Sony on Aug. 27 will begin selling network adapters that will let its PlayStation 2 game consoles tap into existing Internet connections, pushing video games into an uncertain online future.
Sony is keeping initial expectations modest for PS2 online gaming, expecting to ship a total of 500,000 network adapters to a worldwide audience of more than 30 million PS2 owners by the end of the year. Sony executives, game publishers and analysts all anticipate several years of experimentation as the industry looks for online gaming approaches that will resonate with consumers. While analysts see annual revenue from online gaming reaching $1.8 billion by 2005, consoles will account for a small fraction of that, with subscription-based PC games such as "EverQuest" dominating into the near future.
Once this gets rolling, to sustain continual growth, hopefully console games will be built with expansion and replayability in mind as far as when played by a diverse and worldwide audience, especially RPGs. Stale and stagnant content will only lead to erosion in whatever gains a title may initially garner. Even a fair game can see a long future if it evolves instead of remaining the out-of-box pressed cd/dvd experience that was bought. At least PC games have a number of mods and patches to address keeping the content/experience somewhat fresh. Hopefully, it'll all be good.
More on this here.
Source: C/NET News
Posted by: SKYHN
It actually comes out on August 28th, its "shipping" if you pre-ordered on August 27th.
Posted by: Null Actor
It's interesting that sony doesn't expect to sell online gaming to more than 1.7% of their audience. That's low, even for a conservative estimate.
Posted by: AK47
Yeah, that does seem low.
I'm really curious as to see how this will all work out. You cant really base a guess on how the Dreamcast did (which is what Ive tried to do). The PS2 is so successfull, its hard to see its online plan flop, but then again, I'm sure alot of people are cautious about bringing their system online.
As much as I often disagree with how they run things, I think Nintendo has the best plan with their online gaming- and thats really no plan at all yet. It seems like they are going to let Sony and MS do their thing and then based on who succeeds and who doesnt, they will copy the victor.
Or, maybe both the PS2 and Xbox will be successfull online.
Man, you just really cant predict how this all is going to work. Kinda exciting.
Posted by: SKYHN
They are just releasing a handful of them to see how well it does. If it goes well, they will bring out more. Last months PSM said that if things went well with the first 500,000, they would bring out another 500,000 every 2 weeks for 4 weeks, bringing the total up to 1.5 million in the first month(this is for the U.S.). I havent seen any japan sales for the net adaptor so I have no idea how its doing over there.
The main draw to it is that its practically free, because you get a $40 game with it. I think when it first came out in Japan, they had a similar deal.
Posted by: -EG-raynor
when will all of this be ready, im realy looking forward to playing some jk2 on my GC and online, and just to ask, will other systems be able to link to each if they happen to be playing the same game? like an xbox and GC playing with each other on JK2
Posted by: SKYHN
Xbox live is its own network, so GC wont be able to play with Xbox people.
Is JK2 on GC and Xbox even online? I thought it was only MP with link ability.
Posted by: -EG-raynor
i thought it was suppose to be, i read some where it was going to be multiplayer capiable at lucasarts.com
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