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Consoles going online, it’s something that has been talked about for a good couple of years now. I thought it sounded like a fantastic idea when I first heard about it. It seemed like a good concept, playing games alongside people from all over the world without having to fork out thousands for a PC. But now as the eve of the online console gaming approaches, I can see that this could possibly be a big threat to the games industry, but more so, a danger that looms over dedicated gamers such as myself. As we all know, there are three major players currently battling it out in the games industry. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, all going online.
One of the most obvious problems with this new era of online consoles is the introduction of Broadband. Consoles have to use a Broadband connection because a dial-up system just isn’t powerful enough, or fast enough to cope with the expected amount of online gamers. But in order for Broadband to be installed in your area, BT requires 400 signatures from people in your district. This is going to cause serious problems for people living in small towns where quite possibly the entire population of the town is less than 400. For those towns that do have enough people in the area though, not everyone in the area is going to be interested in Broadband, so many gamers won’t be able to play online anyway, even if they wanted to. So the main point being, all consoles will only be able to allow online gaming through a Broadband connection.
A lot of people won’t be interested in online gaming and probably think that this doesn’t affect them. But online gaming does affect everyone. If we look at a few games currently planned for release you will see what I mean. Let’s look at four games from very popular series’. Final Fantasy, Gran Turismo, Destruction Derby and Resident Evil. The next instalments of these games are rumoured to be online only titles. This doesn’t bode well for the majority of gamers out there.
Imagine this for a second; you’ve just went into a shop and bought Final Fantasy XI for £40 and yes, you also have to pay subscription charges for certain games, which quite frankly is exploitation to me. So that’s around another £5 per month on a subscription charge, that’s for each game. On top of all that you also have to pay upwards of £30 per month just to keep your Broadband connection. There you go, around £75 per month just to play one game, and trust me, it won’t be long until other developers get the same idea, so in order to play online it will cost a fortune and if you don’t play online, then you simply don’t play at all. That’s about half the gaming population wiped out already. This is just ridiculous and I can’t see anyone being insane enough to accept these conditions.
I know what you’re all thinking. Yes, the X-Box has been online in America for quite a while now, known as X-Box live. It seems to have been relatively successful, but again this can be traced back to Broadband. The towns in America are much larger than those in Britain, resulting in people having no problem gaining access to a Broadband connection because obviously, they don’t use BT, so Broadband is as common as muck over there. Also, the cost of games in America is cheaper, so it all boils down to cost and accessibility.
With all these expenses you might think that Sony and co will actually benefit from the move to online, after all it puts more money in their pockets doesn’t it? Well, in the long run I would have to say no. If playing a game does indeed amount to the costs stated earlier then I seriously doubt that there will be much demand for games, this would put a huge dent in the wallets of developers. As the sales from games just simply won’t cover the development costs resulting in a loss of profit. So why should they develop games at a loss? The simple answer is that they wont. I doubt Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will get very far without developers assistance. Evidence of this can be seen by the demise of the SEGA Dreamcast. It was the first games console to go online, but there simply wasn’t enough demand due to price, why should you pay to play a game you’ve already forked out £40 pounds for, sound familiar? So, developers abandoned the console and it simply died off. This is why I think consoles going online could potentially have devastating consequences to the games industry as a whole. By ‘whole’ I mean not only developers, gamers or even Sony and crew themselves, think about the potential damage that could occur to retailers such as GAME, or even SR. If no one wants to play games anymore, don’t you think that this could cause some real financial difficulties to companies such as these? The games industry is massive; there is no denying that, so in a worst-case scenario, think about the economical affect this could have.
Maybe I’m just being paranoid, because I have been playing games for just over 13 years and I do prefer games just the way they are, it’s a lot simpler and cheaper. I do know however, that I am not the only one that thinks online consoles is a bad move, I have asked people that I know, and also people on MSN. For the most part, they didn’t agree with online consoles.
The Future Of Gaming? Certainly doesn’t look too good from my perspective.
I’m glad I’ve gotten that lot off my chest; it’s been annoying me for a while now. I would be interested in the views and opinions of the people from this site, as you all seem to be pretty dedicated gamers. Do you think we should go down the online route or simply keep things as they are?
Thanks for reading.
Lou Role.
One of the most obvious problems with this new era of online consoles is the introduction of Broadband. Consoles have to use a Broadband connection because a dial-up system just isn’t powerful enough, or fast enough to cope with the expected amount of online gamers. But in order for Broadband to be installed in your area, BT requires 400 signatures from people in your district. This is going to cause serious problems for people living in small towns where quite possibly the entire population of the town is less than 400. For those towns that do have enough people in the area though, not everyone in the area is going to be interested in Broadband, so many gamers won’t be able to play online anyway, even if they wanted to. So the main point being, all consoles will only be able to allow online gaming through a Broadband connection.
A lot of people won’t be interested in online gaming and probably think that this doesn’t affect them. But online gaming does affect everyone. If we look at a few games currently planned for release you will see what I mean. Let’s look at four games from very popular series’. Final Fantasy, Gran Turismo, Destruction Derby and Resident Evil. The next instalments of these games are rumoured to be online only titles. This doesn’t bode well for the majority of gamers out there.
Imagine this for a second; you’ve just went into a shop and bought Final Fantasy XI for £40 and yes, you also have to pay subscription charges for certain games, which quite frankly is exploitation to me. So that’s around another £5 per month on a subscription charge, that’s for each game. On top of all that you also have to pay upwards of £30 per month just to keep your Broadband connection. There you go, around £75 per month just to play one game, and trust me, it won’t be long until other developers get the same idea, so in order to play online it will cost a fortune and if you don’t play online, then you simply don’t play at all. That’s about half the gaming population wiped out already. This is just ridiculous and I can’t see anyone being insane enough to accept these conditions.
I know what you’re all thinking. Yes, the X-Box has been online in America for quite a while now, known as X-Box live. It seems to have been relatively successful, but again this can be traced back to Broadband. The towns in America are much larger than those in Britain, resulting in people having no problem gaining access to a Broadband connection because obviously, they don’t use BT, so Broadband is as common as muck over there. Also, the cost of games in America is cheaper, so it all boils down to cost and accessibility.
With all these expenses you might think that Sony and co will actually benefit from the move to online, after all it puts more money in their pockets doesn’t it? Well, in the long run I would have to say no. If playing a game does indeed amount to the costs stated earlier then I seriously doubt that there will be much demand for games, this would put a huge dent in the wallets of developers. As the sales from games just simply won’t cover the development costs resulting in a loss of profit. So why should they develop games at a loss? The simple answer is that they wont. I doubt Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will get very far without developers assistance. Evidence of this can be seen by the demise of the SEGA Dreamcast. It was the first games console to go online, but there simply wasn’t enough demand due to price, why should you pay to play a game you’ve already forked out £40 pounds for, sound familiar? So, developers abandoned the console and it simply died off. This is why I think consoles going online could potentially have devastating consequences to the games industry as a whole. By ‘whole’ I mean not only developers, gamers or even Sony and crew themselves, think about the potential damage that could occur to retailers such as GAME, or even SR. If no one wants to play games anymore, don’t you think that this could cause some real financial difficulties to companies such as these? The games industry is massive; there is no denying that, so in a worst-case scenario, think about the economical affect this could have.
Maybe I’m just being paranoid, because I have been playing games for just over 13 years and I do prefer games just the way they are, it’s a lot simpler and cheaper. I do know however, that I am not the only one that thinks online consoles is a bad move, I have asked people that I know, and also people on MSN. For the most part, they didn’t agree with online consoles.
The Future Of Gaming? Certainly doesn’t look too good from my perspective.
I’m glad I’ve gotten that lot off my chest; it’s been annoying me for a while now. I would be interested in the views and opinions of the people from this site, as you all seem to be pretty dedicated gamers. Do you think we should go down the online route or simply keep things as they are?
Thanks for reading.
Lou Role.
Page:
Consoles going online, it’s something that has been talked about for a good couple of years now. I thought it sounded like a fantastic idea when I first heard about it. It seemed like a good concept, playing games alongside people from all over the world without having to fork out thousands for a PC. But now as the eve of the online console gaming approaches, I can see that this could possibly be a big threat to the games industry, but more so, a danger that looms over dedicated gamers such as myself. As we all know, there are three major players currently battling it out in the games industry. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, all going online.
One of the most obvious problems with this new era of online consoles is the introduction of Broadband. Consoles have to use a Broadband connection because a dial-up system just isn’t powerful enough, or fast enough to cope with the expected amount of online gamers. But in order for Broadband to be installed in your area, BT requires 400 signatures from people in your district. This is going to cause serious problems for people living in small towns where quite possibly the entire population of the town is less than 400. For those towns that do have enough people in the area though, not everyone in the area is going to be interested in Broadband, so many gamers won’t be able to play online anyway, even if they wanted to. So the main point being, all consoles will only be able to allow online gaming through a Broadband connection.
A lot of people won’t be interested in online gaming and probably think that this doesn’t affect them. But online gaming does affect everyone. If we look at a few games currently planned for release you will see what I mean. Let’s look at four games from very popular series’. Final Fantasy, Gran Turismo, Destruction Derby and Resident Evil. The next instalments of these games are rumoured to be online only titles. This doesn’t bode well for the majority of gamers out there.
Imagine this for a second; you’ve just went into a shop and bought Final Fantasy XI for £40 and yes, you also have to pay subscription charges for certain games, which quite frankly is exploitation to me. So that’s around another £5 per month on a subscription charge, that’s for each game. On top of all that you also have to pay upwards of £30 per month just to keep your Broadband connection. There you go, around £75 per month just to play one game, and trust me, it won’t be long until other developers get the same idea, so in order to play online it will cost a fortune and if you don’t play online, then you simply don’t play at all. That’s about half the gaming population wiped out already. This is just ridiculous and I can’t see anyone being insane enough to accept these conditions.
I know what you’re all thinking. Yes, the X-Box has been online in America for quite a while now, known as X-Box live. It seems to have been relatively successful, but again this can be traced back to Broadband. The towns in America are much larger than those in Britain, resulting in people having no problem gaining access to a Broadband connection because obviously, they don’t use BT, so Broadband is as common as muck over there. Also, the cost of games in America is cheaper, so it all boils down to cost and accessibility.
With all these expenses you might think that Sony and co will actually benefit from the move to online, after all it puts more money in their pockets doesn’t it? Well, in the long run I would have to say no. If playing a game does indeed amount to the costs stated earlier then I seriously doubt that there will be much demand for games, this would put a huge dent in the wallets of developers. As the sales from games just simply won’t cover the development costs resulting in a loss of profit. So why should they develop games at a loss? The simple answer is that they wont. I doubt Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will get very far without developers assistance. Evidence of this can be seen by the demise of the SEGA Dreamcast. It was the first games console to go online, but there simply wasn’t enough demand due to price, why should you pay to play a game you’ve already forked out £40 pounds for, sound familiar? So, developers abandoned the console and it simply died off. This is why I think consoles going online could potentially have devastating consequences to the games industry as a whole. By ‘whole’ I mean not only developers, gamers or even Sony and crew themselves, think about the potential damage that could occur to retailers such as GAME, or even SR. If no one wants to play games anymore, don’t you think that this could cause some real financial difficulties to companies such as these? The games industry is massive; there is no denying that, so in a worst-case scenario, think about the economical affect this could have.
Maybe I’m just being paranoid, because I have been playing games for just over 13 years and I do prefer games just the way they are, it’s a lot simpler and cheaper. I do know however, that I am not the only one that thinks online consoles is a bad move, I have asked people that I know, and also people on MSN. For the most part, they didn’t agree with online consoles.
The Future Of Gaming? Certainly doesn’t look too good from my perspective.
I’m glad I’ve gotten that lot off my chest; it’s been annoying me for a while now. I would be interested in the views and opinions of the people from this site, as you all seem to be pretty dedicated gamers. Do you think we should go down the online route or simply keep things as they are?
Thanks for reading.
Lou Role.
One of the most obvious problems with this new era of online consoles is the introduction of Broadband. Consoles have to use a Broadband connection because a dial-up system just isn’t powerful enough, or fast enough to cope with the expected amount of online gamers. But in order for Broadband to be installed in your area, BT requires 400 signatures from people in your district. This is going to cause serious problems for people living in small towns where quite possibly the entire population of the town is less than 400. For those towns that do have enough people in the area though, not everyone in the area is going to be interested in Broadband, so many gamers won’t be able to play online anyway, even if they wanted to. So the main point being, all consoles will only be able to allow online gaming through a Broadband connection.
A lot of people won’t be interested in online gaming and probably think that this doesn’t affect them. But online gaming does affect everyone. If we look at a few games currently planned for release you will see what I mean. Let’s look at four games from very popular series’. Final Fantasy, Gran Turismo, Destruction Derby and Resident Evil. The next instalments of these games are rumoured to be online only titles. This doesn’t bode well for the majority of gamers out there.
Imagine this for a second; you’ve just went into a shop and bought Final Fantasy XI for £40 and yes, you also have to pay subscription charges for certain games, which quite frankly is exploitation to me. So that’s around another £5 per month on a subscription charge, that’s for each game. On top of all that you also have to pay upwards of £30 per month just to keep your Broadband connection. There you go, around £75 per month just to play one game, and trust me, it won’t be long until other developers get the same idea, so in order to play online it will cost a fortune and if you don’t play online, then you simply don’t play at all. That’s about half the gaming population wiped out already. This is just ridiculous and I can’t see anyone being insane enough to accept these conditions.
I know what you’re all thinking. Yes, the X-Box has been online in America for quite a while now, known as X-Box live. It seems to have been relatively successful, but again this can be traced back to Broadband. The towns in America are much larger than those in Britain, resulting in people having no problem gaining access to a Broadband connection because obviously, they don’t use BT, so Broadband is as common as muck over there. Also, the cost of games in America is cheaper, so it all boils down to cost and accessibility.
With all these expenses you might think that Sony and co will actually benefit from the move to online, after all it puts more money in their pockets doesn’t it? Well, in the long run I would have to say no. If playing a game does indeed amount to the costs stated earlier then I seriously doubt that there will be much demand for games, this would put a huge dent in the wallets of developers. As the sales from games just simply won’t cover the development costs resulting in a loss of profit. So why should they develop games at a loss? The simple answer is that they wont. I doubt Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will get very far without developers assistance. Evidence of this can be seen by the demise of the SEGA Dreamcast. It was the first games console to go online, but there simply wasn’t enough demand due to price, why should you pay to play a game you’ve already forked out £40 pounds for, sound familiar? So, developers abandoned the console and it simply died off. This is why I think consoles going online could potentially have devastating consequences to the games industry as a whole. By ‘whole’ I mean not only developers, gamers or even Sony and crew themselves, think about the potential damage that could occur to retailers such as GAME, or even SR. If no one wants to play games anymore, don’t you think that this could cause some real financial difficulties to companies such as these? The games industry is massive; there is no denying that, so in a worst-case scenario, think about the economical affect this could have.
Maybe I’m just being paranoid, because I have been playing games for just over 13 years and I do prefer games just the way they are, it’s a lot simpler and cheaper. I do know however, that I am not the only one that thinks online consoles is a bad move, I have asked people that I know, and also people on MSN. For the most part, they didn’t agree with online consoles.
The Future Of Gaming? Certainly doesn’t look too good from my perspective.
I’m glad I’ve gotten that lot off my chest; it’s been annoying me for a while now. I would be interested in the views and opinions of the people from this site, as you all seem to be pretty dedicated gamers. Do you think we should go down the online route or simply keep things as they are?
Thanks for reading.
Lou Role.
Nintedno - We love you.
Dial up modems are us.
Dial up modems are us.
When it comes to it though, many games won't let dial-up adaptors on, because they slow everyone else down. It looks like I won't get a taster of any online 'cube action...
Or otherwise.
Or otherwise.
I'm not looking forward to the whole online gaming thing either. We don't have broadband in ireland yet so we'll miss out on a lot of great online games. Broadband isn't going to be released here for at least another 18-24 months, and even when it is, I doubt it will be affordable enough to get for quite a while after release.
There you go, that's another example. Most of Ireland don't seem to be getting Broadband for a while. So that's most of Irelands online gaming population wiped out.
Accessability seems to be a major problem here.
Accessability seems to be a major problem here.
The strange thing is Game are stocking The Sims Online here. Bit of a waste that seeing as no one can actually play it properly!
I dont particullaly enjoy online gaming on my PC let alone on my GC. Ive played worms a couple of times but you just go into a lobby and you find about 10 nutters who just spend their whole day in their and when you play them you just get totally and utterly annilated! It aint something that makes you wanna play online agian! i can asire you. the same thing happend on jedi ooutcast!
another thing. since when did Residen tevil say their next game is going to be totally online? The next resi games coming out are 2 and 3 and as far as i know these arnt online.
another thing. since when did Residen tevil say their next game is going to be totally online? The next resi games coming out are 2 and 3 and as far as i know these arnt online.
The newest Resident Evil is Resident Evil: Online and is for the PS2, meaning that not only is it online only, but broadband only too...
ACTUALLY gamecube does have a dial up modem as well as broadband but i am fortunate enough to have broadband phew!
Yea Pringle, just what Memorandum said.
There are plans for a Resident Evil : Online for the PS2. It is online only. Thats why I'm starting to become worried that other developers will follow suit and this will become an all too common trend. Obviously if games start to become online only then a lot of people aren't going to be able to play on their consoles at all. At least not many games anyway, causing the lack of demand and causing damage to the industry. That was the main point I was trying to put accross in the original post.
There are plans for a Resident Evil : Online for the PS2. It is online only. Thats why I'm starting to become worried that other developers will follow suit and this will become an all too common trend. Obviously if games start to become online only then a lot of people aren't going to be able to play on their consoles at all. At least not many games anyway, causing the lack of demand and causing damage to the industry. That was the main point I was trying to put accross in the original post.
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