Microsoft's Big Bet on Online Gaming 351
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "The Wall Street Journal Online analyzes the prospects of the Xbox's online-gaming component. Analysts say Microsoft has spent hundreds of millions on Xbox Live, with little guarantees of returns. 'It is not clear that companies like Microsoft and Sony will be able to lure large numbers of players -- each has attracted a small fraction of users to online play with their previous consoles,' WSJ Online writes. 'The companies also must be careful about new business models for distributing games -- such as games-on-demand -- so as not to alienate game publishers, who still rely heavily on in-store sales. And games designed for multiple players have a mixed record of attracting customers.' Says analyst Michael Pachter, 'At the end of the day, we don't play games for social interaction ... We play games to escape.' Microsoft's strategy is 'absolutely flawed,' he added.""
Um (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't play games to escape anything. It's like saying "You build model boats to escape from society". That's utter bullshit. Hell, I'll go to a local computer gaming place to kick the crap out of all the people there in Counter Strike as a social interaction.
Next time someone wants to tell me why I'm playing video games, tell it to my face.
Re:Um (Score:5, Interesting)
He said the big challenge is that games have become so complex, that there are no casual gamers. That the world has been divided into two types of people: those who play games, and those who don't play games.
I see his point- I haven't played a video game in years, aside from ones that can be learned in 5 minutes. I just don't have the time to spend hours every day attaining levels and learning complex controls and commands.
Re:Um (Score:2, Interesting)
What the heck does a Securities analyst know about gaming? Looking at his comments, I'd say not a whole heck of a lot.
Re:Um (Score:5, Interesting)
Most hobbies are an advanced (and not necessarily bad) form of procrastination. It's a purposeful 'doing what you don't have to do' so that you don't have to think about anything that you do have to do. It's an escape. An escape from your life and your responsibilities. Playing online isn't real social interaction, even if playing multiplayer games in the same room can be.
Sorry, this is as close to "to your face" as I can get.
I see what he is saying (Score:3, Interesting)
The difference is subtle but there. When I game, the chatting, etc is pertinent only for the game. If I want to meet new ppl or find a date, I go elsewhere. Taking my online gaming and trying to make it a "social interaction" *IS* the wrong approach.
And I think that is what he is talking about here.
I love it. Test your assumptions with games. (Score:3, Interesting)
Next you're going to see an application "Office 360" that replaces your computer desktop and only allows you to do your desktop job... one ap at a time.
Brilliant.
An interesting question (Score:5, Interesting)
Further, WoW/other MMORPGs and the Battlefield series I think offer some of THE most intense gaming available in any form, anywhere. No console solo or online game or PC game can really touch the intensity and complexity of these games. (and the difficulty level, especially in Battlefield. Even n00bs shoot me down and gun me down every 5-10 kills I get, which is a far harder game that most solo ones)
But the regular public, the joes on the streets who buy game consoles by the millions and make up the "average", fat, T.V. watching, braindead gameplay game playing, Geography ignorant, stereotyping and racially biased, Americans? Who the hell knows what sort of trash they'll really buy. Unfortunatly for us, they make up the real market that Microsoft needs to make money from, and it seems that Microsoft, composed mostly of top C.S. graduates, thinks more like we do.
Michael Pachter is wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
I personally play ONLY games against/with real people like Counter-Strike multiplayer,
single-player is not for me, playing against "bots" is a dead-end play, I never play single player games.
Online gamming is the next logical step. Microsoft is on the right track.
Re:Social gaming... (Score:3, Interesting)
$100 per month if it includes the broadband ISP charges. $200 if it also included telephone and cable TV w/DVR capabilities.
That's about what I'm paying now for cable TV, cable internet, 3 x X-Box Live accounts and VoIP thru Packet8.
I'm investigating running my own TeamSpeak server and possibly dropping the X-Box Live accounts. America's Army is better on PC (Linux!) than X-Box. Call of Duty 2 is excellent on PC (Windows), and I'm not willing to shell out for an X-Box 360 when I already have the game on a PC.
-Charles
Risk? Not really. (Score:2, Interesting)
A) The gaming market had not been established for almost 30 years beforehand.
B) Microsoft wasn't 2nd in the market right now.
To me the question isn't "who will win the gaming console battle" or "will Xbox live succeed". To me the question is really "whose vision will prevail in the home-computer-electronics-content merger" -- the players there being Sony, Microsoft, Apple, and the cable companies. Each having an upper hand in one area, but trying actively to get into the others.
Re:Time (Score:2, Interesting)
none of these required sidequests where you have to go crossbreed giant racing chickens for months just to advance the game.
Re:Tell this to Blizzard (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.blizzard.com/press/051219.shtml [blizzard.com]
In truth, that's only a drop in the bucket. There are 6 billion people in the world, (pulling numbers out of a hat here) 1/4 who could afford $15/month and about half of them are 'eligable' gamers. That means 750 million people are possible, future online gamers. 5 million is a drop in the bucket.
Microsoft is defately going where the money is.
Re:This guy missed the point of online gaming . . (Score:3, Interesting)
And games that do it right - like Halo 2 - let you take a group of your friends into a game so you can take other groups of people. Even the annoying little brats aren't as bad when you're playing against them with a team full of friends - and beating the snot out of them.
Re:Um (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Um (Score:4, Interesting)
Depends on the game too. I actually mis-read the title of the article at first, thinking it said something about MS using the Xbox for online gambling...which really did catch my eye.
If there were some way to do gambling online through a video game...man, THERE would sure be a huge revenue stream there. A virtual casio would be pretty cool...a Sims type world, where you can really win/lose money.
Re:This guy missed the point of online gaming . . (Score:3, Interesting)
It was sometime in the early 80's when I played two games regularly - Ultima III and Quest for Sorcery. Ultima III is easy enough to understand / look up. Quest for Sorcery was a multi-player text adventure ran on Major BBS systems (the system I played on had 8 lines). Quest had no stats - your ability to interact within the world (and even combat other players) was entirely based on your knowledge of how to use various objects and utter the right commands. Combat was not common but there was a competition to solve all the puzzles in the game.
One day, after playing Quest for a good part of the week, I loaded up Ultima... and it was... flat. It had lost its magic. It just wasn't fun any more. And I suddenly realized why. The night before, I had been playing Quest and was working on one of the puzzles when the following text appeard on my screen:
A strong gust of wind whips through the room.
Simple. But the implications were very important. Someone in the game had just figured out how to do something new. And that was the catch - a world where other people affected your environment was somehow much more... interesting than the static world of single-player games.
A side note to all this... I met Richard Garriot at a science fair that year. I noted to him how Ultima just wasn't as fun despite all its content and graphics. That a (relatively) simple text game had trumped it due to one very important aspect - muti-player environment. And, by the way, wouldn't it be cool if Ultima could be like that? Richard seemed to like the idea and invited me to call him at a later time... but I never did manage to get ahold of him again. Years later, and more likely due to natural progression rather than anything I said, Ultima Online made its debut.
eh, don't make so much out of it... (Score:3, Interesting)
The stuff they did is just an extension of that. Once you can download code and content, why not put some stuff up for free publicity? Once you already sell "track packs" (see PGR2 on Xbox), why not sell entire micro games?
You're gonna want to update the "BIOS" on the machine to thwart modchips anyway...
All this came more by necessity than anything else, and so I fully expect you'll see similar stuff from Sony, who isn't otherwise known for being keen on online. Heck, they'll have to send out patches to fix their BluRay video player ability, since it's going to be just about the first one of its kind and complex as heck (it uses Java!).
We also expect Nintendo is going to do this too, since they said the "Revolution will be infinitely backwards-compatible". They meant that it will play NES, SNES and N64 games. Well, it doesn't have 3 cartridge slots on it, so where will the game ROM images come from? Answer, they'll sell them to you again over the internet.
It's just business in today's world. MS isn't really striking out much or taking much of a gamble.