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"Price Hike in Online Gaming"

Since the banner advertising revenues took a dive towards the end of last year, the online gaming community has started to see the after effects coming into play.

There are still plenty of freebie online games out there to play of you look around, but more and more are starting to look to raising revenue in other ways apart from banner clicks and the gamers are having to pay the price.

Planetarion, with 185,000 users, is one of the popular free online games that will shortly be introducing a 'pay per play' version of it's popular 'Domination of the Universe' genre.

What this means is that most of their investment will be ploughed into the pay version, and the free version will suffer more downtime as a result, although the game's creators are playing this down.

It's not just the MUD's and other type of online games that will be affected, these moves will have ramifications later on for console gamers too.

At present, the dialup charge for console gaming in the UK is the same price of a phonecall, which most gamers can cope with, but avid gamers can't, you could quite easily run up an £800 phonebill in a month if you played Phantasy Star Online as often as I do (I play offline though, so I miss out on a lot of the online features).

Dialup charges can either stay the same, or go up or down. Staying the same just isn't acceptable, prices are high enough as it is. Prices going up to a special premium rate cost (say 7p per minute), would be equally as bad, but if gaming goes into one of it's cyclical recessions this may be a real possibility in the future.

Toll free online gaming is every gamers' dream, but years ago we were all dreaming about free internet access, but most of us realise that however 'free' your ISP is, to get a decent service you have to pay a price. So toll free console dialup I don't think is going to happen.

So, at present the future looks a bit bleak for online gaming, and we may see this being reflected in the types of games that are being developed next year, which may concentrate more on single player type games in Europe, and more online features in the USA and Japan, where online gaming costs are negligible.

One example of this is Sega's decision to release Daytona USA 2001 over here without many of the online features that were included in the original JAP and USA versions, making it a much poorer game as a result for its price (still an excellent game though). If more developers go this way, then we could see a big divide in the types of game we get in Europe and the types of games we see elsewhere.

Europe could turn into a Third World gaming continent if we aren't careful.

This is all MT's fault. Anyone who got the POSM2 with The Getaway on the front (red) might have read my letter "Broadly Speaking". This explains it all. Here is the body of it:

############################
I have concerns about this broadband add-on coming to PS2

I, like a lot of people, access the net via an 0800 ISP, so I don't have to
pay for my net time. Will I be able to use this with PS2? I think not. The
PS2, as far as I am aware, will use an Ethernet connector, which means I
will have to get a socket installed in my house. The thing is, I'm worried
about the cost. Many people will have to get a connector installed, which
will be £70 upwards. After that, there will probably be a monthly charge for
the service. In the UK, we struggle for free dialup. How much is lightening
fast broadband going to cost?

The fact is, the market for PS2 is around 14-30 years olds. Anyone under 18
will probably not have the money, and neither will students. The latter
might also be living in rented accommodation, where they can't have an
Ethernet line installed. Also, you've got to think that in the UK, only
cities can get broadband access.

I think the UK is not ready for broadband. The reason? BT. The solution? A
world without BT. But then again, we may catch another glimpse of the famous
Sony magic at work in the summer. Who knows? I hope we do
############################

Only because they are still paying off Bob Hoskin's wage bill and paying hush money to Anne Robinson to help keep her off their backs.

I also heard that Buzby and Maureen Lipmann did a runner with £3 billion and opened up a rival telecommunications network in the Seychelles.

Meka, thing is, aren't BT like 6Billion in debt at the moment or something?

My monthly BT payment includes Free local calls on off peak times.

Providing the servers for Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony are local, people with that BT package will get online console battles free.

All I'd need is another phoneline :-D

Your Honour wrote:

I think that the
> government, or OFTEL or whatever, need to step in and sort something
> out. I think OFTEL have already submitted reccomendations to BT, but
> BT are trying to delay making these changes as long as possible.

No this is how it works:

OFTEL change regulations and insist BT have to do something.

BT put forward proposal.

OFTEL reject proposal, as there's a slight danger that BT may not be loosing out enough on that deal.

BT put forward second proposal.

OFTEL say this will be acceptable only if BT insist on not doing it until the competition has a chance to do so too.


Did you know that OFTEL forbid BT from doing Comic Reliefs phone lines for free? BT had to charge them under OFTEL regulations as no part of BT's business is allowed to fund any other.

They also had to put a stop to a scheme that supplied computers and internet connections to schools as it was not self financing, therefore not fitting in with OFTEL regulations.

This whole crazy Internet thing is still remarkably new medium and a business tool...

Prices and stuff like will sort themselves out over time

(although it may be a little longer than one would hope)

Thing is, at the moment, even if you have a free dial-up 'net connection, you can't use it with a DC. However, Sega have said they wish to rectify this with the release of Dreamkey 2.0, which should be out this summer.

I know that it does seem a bit bizzarre that, after you've already paid for the game, to get the most out of it you have to continue to pay. Look at Everquest and the like, you buy the game, say £30, you then pay another however much per month to the Everquest people, £10ish i think, on top of that, you may have to pay phone charges as well!

It's like pubs these days. Some of them charge you to go in, even though when you're in there, you're bound to buy a drink and spend your money anyway. What will be next? Having to pay to get into shops?

The one thing that does save the principle of paying for online gaming is that (hopefully) when you're paying for it, the standard of the service will remain high, unlike some free services.

I think that the government, or OFTEL or whatever, need to step in and sort something out. I think OFTEL have already submitted reccomendations to BT, but BT are trying to delay making these changes as long as possible.

That's the problem, but what's the solution?

I can handle a poor internet connection from home when I pay quite little for it, but a service so unreliable would not be suitable for gaming.

Broadband is being tipped to do big things when fully rolled out, but there are many areas of the country that won't be able to access this for a while.

Actually it's not really online features I'm looking for in the next generation of gaming, but still, it would be nice if they were there, and fully functional.

I pay a tenner for my free internet connection... and, although I get knocked off every two hours...

My min connection is around 36. ...

Does me fine..

:)

Dude, although you're probably aware of this, IGN and PC Gamer carried this story in the previous couple of weeks.

I'm not saying that you copied this with any intention, just wanted to thank you for raising this touchy issue once more.

I play games online using Fr**serve, it costs me £12.99 per month for unlimited access.

The notion of pay to play is as disgusting as the pay-to-play ethos that surrounds bands.