Consoles Sluggish To Get Online In Europe

Thanks to Evil Avatar for pointing to a Reuters article discussing the relatively slowly developing online console gaming market in Europe. According to the article, "Since launching in mid-March, [Microsoft] has signed up to Xbox Live 50,000 European gamers across much of Western Europe." As a comparison, "Microsoft and Sony Corp have.. [signed up] over one million subscribers between them in the U.S. since launching services in the second half of 2002." Although it's early days for Europe, will the many separate markets/countries and varying broadband penetration help or hinder the big console manufacturers?

Comments

Phone System

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it has to do with most of europe having per-minute phone charges?

Re:Phone System

[Sebadude]

It most likely has more to do with broadband penetration as the poster suggests.

The cost of a high-speed connection is generally much higher in Europe than in North America, and if a lot of people can justify these costs for their professional needs, the number of people who will be willing to spend that much money for such a restricted form of gaming (relatively speaking... when you compare to online gaming on PC) is probably very low.

Re:Phone System

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... I pay 20 euros per month for a 10 mbit line in sweden. So there.

No tech support

[Anonymous Coward]

My Gf works at freeserve tech support in the uk and they only have one guy who knows/is allowed to handle tech support for x-box, he is on holiday at the momant, so people who can't get it working have to wait two weeks till he gets back, its not really suprising not many people are taking it up if this is the level of support they get.

Re:No tech support

[Anonymous Coward]

shit. i gotta get x-box online certified IMMEDIATELY.

Bandwidth Charges

[Anonymous Coward]

I was under the impression (from various uk magazines I've picked up) that many of the telcos in the UK charge for bandwidth and/or access times. That could have something to do with it - I know I wouldn't be playing massive amounts of UT Championship knowing that I was being charged by the minute to increase my l337 skills.

I don't think there's *any* service here in Oz

[Kris_J]

Remember that earlier article about slow boardband pickup in Australia? Well, because of it on-line gaming on the whole is pretty quiet here. As far as I know, since the Dreamcast on-line experience was ballsed-up so badly, no one has dared try again with consoles.

It's not the console, it's broadband access

[Torgo's Pizza]

If you look at how many people have broadband in Europe as compared to the US or Japan, that would explain a lot. It's too expensive for what you get. Sheesh, it's even worse in Oz with the monopoly situation there.

Re:It's not the console, it's broadband access

[icewitch]

It's not so much the expense it's that you can't bloody get it if you live in large parts of the UK.

Re:It's not the console, it's broadband access

[pommaq]

Poppycock.
Here in Sweden, practically everyone has access to fast and cheap broadband. I'm not going to pull figures out of my ass (can't really be bothered to google for it either) but I can guarantee you that the market penetration of broadband is way higher here than in both the US and Japan. Everyone in my neighborhood can sign up for VDSL (uncapped, 26Mb/sec both upstream and downstream) for about [quick math] $45/month. Access is not the issue here.

I think it's mostly a question of neglect and/or culture. As a European, I'm used to not even being able to play MMORPGs because most companies have decided "well, europe's a crummy market, we don't need to put servers there, they can bloody well use the north american ones". There are of course exceptions (I'm a d2 addict, for instance) but I think everyone expects lag, incompatibilities, and general arrogance from these online services. But then again, that might just be me.
Also; Europeans are, for some reason, less inclined to pay for online content. First buying the game and then having to pay through the nose for the privilege of playing? Seems a bit excessive. It's worth noting that games where you can play-all-you-like after buying the game, like BF1942 and Counter-Strike, are huge here.

I'm sure there are overpaid analysts who can find other reasons, but this is what I see.

Re:It's not the console, it's broadband access

[Albert Pussyjuice]

So you expect that your forty euros (or whatever you pay for the game - I'm not in Europe), once spent, should give you unlimited access. Let's consider that: in a game like Everquest or the Sims Online where the company has to maintain centralized servers, how long do you think that fourty euros will pay for those servers to be up and running? Ignoring the fact that if you dump all your money into maintaining the servers, you make no profit. The original price of the game pays for development while the monthly subscription pays for the maintanence of the servers. You cite games that don't have the requirement of centralized servers for play where an end user can host. This is quite different.

How does this seem excessive? You pay for the development and packaging of a game - then you pay for the service provided by the company with their servers.

Re:It's not the console, it's broadband access

[pommaq]

I'd pay about 400SEK, since Sweden isn't a member of the EMU yet :)
Anyway, I know all that. I'm well aware that running and maintaining persistent worlds and gaming servers can be damn expensive (in fact, I work for a small game developer and we have a little subscription gaming community of our own). I don't expect to be able to play such a game for free. But in the end, that's a moot point.

What it boils down to is that I don't want to pay for development, packaging and server service, I want to pay to play a game. If the price is too high, I'm not going to buy it, and that's the simple truth of it all. I can get just as much fun from BF1942 or IL-2, even if my pilot or soldier doesn't persist on the server. It's fun vs cost, and to me, MMORPGs and their ilk always seem to be on the wrong side of that balance. YMMV, of course.

Re:It's not the console, it's broadband access

[PainKilleR-CE]

You pay for the development and packaging of a game - then you pay for the service provided by the company with their servers.

If this were the case, the initial price would drop off once the development and setup was paid for. The simple fact is that beyond X number of copies the $50 price up front is profit - packaging - (publishing fees + advertisement) - initial month's service. As past games have shown, though, the price only drops off when:
a) the game is having trouble staying afloat due to problems or just lack of interest, or
b) the game has been successful for well over a year and most of the players and the game world are well established at high levels, meaning the new player that bought the game at $20 finds the world overpopulated and overly exploited.

Even the expansions for a game like Everquest are developed on the funds from the subscriptions, and despite the $50 up-front cost the majority of profit comes from players that are subscribers for 6 months or more. You could buy a new (not bargain bin) game every 3 or 4 months on subscription fees, and I don't think there's a company out there that's been able to release a successful title every 4 months for as long as Everquest has been running.

Re:It's not the console, it's broadband access

[Albert Pussyjuice]

Well of course you're also paying money so the company can profit. That's stating the obvious. My point was that the cash paid for your original purchase of the game goes towards the development costs and not server maintanence.

Honestly, of course some of the money on the sale and paying for the service is profit-taking by the company.

Re:It's not the console, it's broadband access

[PainKilleR-CE]

Well of course you're also paying money so the company can profit. That's stating the obvious. My point was that the cash paid for your original purchase of the game goes towards the development costs and not server maintanence.

My point was that at some point ALL of the money is going towards profit and/or server maintenance, if the game does well. If the game doesn't do well, then chances are that they'll never recover the costs. Of course, it all depends on how well their initial sales go. However, if a game is one (such as Star Wars Galaxies) that is predicted to do well in initial sales, there's really no reason to pay $50 up front for the game. I can understand that up front costs are going to have to be paid at some level for the development and setup costs, but the level of profit that's coming in on these games far surpasses the cost of maintenance or development, when they can manage to bring together a certain number of subscribers.

The idea that any company needs both the initial $50 and a subscription rate from $10-15/month to support one of these games when other companies are doing something similar (though obviously not quite the same level) simply by delivering a new game every couple of years and charging no monthly rate implies that the initial price for MMO games could be dropped to a lower point if the company can deliver a solid product.

Of course, the one company that everyone likes to point to is Blizzard, and it's likely that they'll fund most of Battle.net's continued growth and development through WoW if it's a successful product.

I'm not trying to say that companies should not make a profit, I'm simply trying to point out that when people complain about the prices for these games, they're making a very legitimate point. Companies that can create and maintain very successful MMO games will continue to use this pricing, and even increase the subscription costs, so long as they don't feel they're losing a significant number of subscribers and/or initial buyers (though in reality the subscribers will always be more important than initial buyers once the product has had a successful launch), because within 4 months' time they can bring in the same amount (or more, since shipping, packagining, and such costs don't figure into subscription rates, though billing does) that another company would have to ship 2 fairly successful games to bring in.

People simply need to adjust their arguments in favour of these pricing schemes if they really want a solid place to work from. Frankly, whatever justifications are brought forward, regardless of how good they are, won't make me pay full price for one of these games until I see something that truly looks interesting and gets good reviews of it's actual launch (rather than reviews of the betas, I want to know how well the game handles hundreds of thousands of people hitting their registration servers on day one and hitting the game servers 15 minutes later, if they aren't prepared for that properly, they're going to be playing catch-up for at least 3 months). Very few of these games (even the most popular of them) have had solid launches, and while that could be excused with the early games (UO, EQ, etc), the ones that have launched in the last year or two, as well as those that will be launching in the future, really have no excuse until we start to see even larger numbers willing to pay this kind of money to play these games. Who knows, maybe Star Wars Galaxies will bring that kind of audience, but I haven't seen that kind of ground-level hype for the game yet.

Credit cards

[SmallFurryCreature]

In Holland at least credit cards are not nearly as widespread as they seem to be in the US. We have an excellent free debit card system in place. Of course this cannot be used with any of the online style systems (games or consoles). They all require a credit card. I suppose a simple bank tranfer (cheap safe and secure) is to difficult by them.

Why pay for a credit card then pay intrest when you can get better service (protection against theft) for free?

Re:Credit cards

[PainKilleR-CE]

We have an excellent free debit card system in place.

Most of the debit card system in the US is backed by one or the other of the major credit card companies, so the online systems don't know the difference ;)

As usual, you Americans have no idea of Europe...

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason, that console online gaming is slower here in Europe has nothing to do with higher prices for broadband (which is wrong anyway) or fragmented markets. The main reason is, that Germany (the next largest market for games/software after US and Japan) is very PC centered and people play online on their Computers instead of Consoles. Consoles are still considered toys in Germany (though I prefer them for some games) and neraly everyone has a private PC that has a fast videocard and fast cpu (much more than in the US for example). People have no need to play online on their consoles since they consider PCs superior for this and usually have one or two PCs already.

creditcards, creditcrards, creditcards...

[Vincman]

Having worked for an online retailer for quite some time, I know that the average European does not use or have a creditcard. For example, when ordering at Amazon.de (Germany), you can pay via bank-transfer, which is much more common in Germany, than paying by credicard. Yet X-Box (the only system I can speak for) requires a creditcard to connect to it's Live-system.
Broadband is pretty widespread, and not too expensive either, is not as relevant a factor as this.

UK Broadband users ripped off

[Oakey]

It's all very well saying broadband is fast and cheap in Sweden, we all know that. It's the p2p warez capital of the world. Unfortunately, for the rest of us, broadband uptake IS slow because of cost. In the UK I pay £50 (USD$83) for a 2Mbit cable connection. My download is great, i regularly get around 300k/sec+ but my upload is capped at 30k/sec. There's no bandwidth limits though (as of yet). We get screwed. Who knows why, we just do. Man, I'd love to be like Sweden and have 26Mbit both directions for even less than I pay now. Shame it will never happen.

Gamecube online?

[Echo5ive]

The fact that there currently is only one Gamecube game (Phantasy Star Online) with online capabilities available in Europe certainly doesn't help. I'd love to try some online gaming, but I have a Gamecube. I don't want to buy another console just to play online.

The Xbox is dirt cheap here in Sweden now, though. My old DVD player is starting to act weird, so I'm considering an Xbox just for the DVD capabilities. That it plays games is a nice bonus. :-)

Re:Gamecube online?

[PainKilleR-CE]

My old DVD player is starting to act weird, so I'm considering an Xbox just for the DVD capabilities. That it plays games is a nice bonus. :-)

Don't forget the DVD Remote, then, because, unlike the PS2, the XBox doesn't play DVDs without the remote. Perhaps that's not a big deal to most people (it really isn't to me, either), but it just bothers me a bit that my XBox is sitting there with a DVD decoder I've been told (and shown) is better than the PS2 decoder, but I can't use it without spending US$30.

Re:Gamecube online?

[ivan256]

it just bothers me a bit that my XBox is sitting there with a DVD decoder I've been told (and shown) is better than the PS2 decoder, but I can't use it without spending US$30.

I was at Sears yesterday, and they had an Apex DVD player for $39 after rebate. It came with a remote. If Apex can sell the whole damned player and remote for $39, why can't Microsoft sell their remote for less?

I think I'd rather have the Apex DVD player and the Xbox than the Xbox and the remote. At least that way if the Xbox or the DVD player broke I wouldn't be out both. Hardly seems like there's any "Bonus" involved in buying an Xbox. I won't even get into the XBox live kit costing more than the PS2 network adapter plus a game...

Re:Gamecube online?

[PainKilleR-CE]

I think I'd rather have the Apex DVD player and the Xbox than the Xbox and the remote.

Yeah, I can see that. I currently have 2 DVD players (1 Samsung DVD player which I bought a couple of years ago, and a Samsung DVD/VHS combo player that I bought a few months ago after my VCR broke). I haven't bothered with the DVD remote yet, but if I see it at a bargain rate I might pick it up eventually. At the moment I use the PS2 for DVD playback from time to time.

At least that way if the Xbox or the DVD player broke I wouldn't be out both.

I try to limit my game systems to being used only for games (though, as I said above, I still use the PS2 for DVDs once in a while), simply because, as you pointed out, it's pretty cheap to replace a DVD player, but although both the PS2 and XBox are cheaper than when I bought them, they're not that cheap.

Hardly seems like there's any "Bonus" involved in buying an Xbox. I won't even get into the XBox live kit costing more than the PS2 network adapter plus a game...

hmm I don't know how much the PS2 network adapter costs, but that doesn't sound right to me unless you're talking about the 'greatest hits' games and the adapter runs $20-30 or less. Personally, my XBox games consist primarily of Halo and a handful of games that were released on 2 or 3 platforms but clearly had improved graphics and/or features on the XBox. I'm not buying the XBox Live kit until I've got a handful of games I want to play online, though, just like I'm not buying the PS2 adapter until I have a reason to (though maybe FFXI will be that reason).

Re:Gamecube online?

[ivan256]

hmm I don't know how much the PS2 network adapter costs, but that doesn't sound right to me unless you're talking about the 'greatest hits' games and the adapter runs $20-30 or less.

$29.99 and came with the game...

Some possible reasons

[Smoking]

• Language: many different languages are not helping it: try to say "I'll kick your ass " in portuguese, german and polish... On the other hand many europeans speak english between themselves
• Broadband access: Even in rich countries like Switzerland and Germany, broadband is not quite the rage. And at least sony's offering is broadband only, no modems allowed...
• PCs: people buy broadband because they have a PC, and guess what, they already play games on it (Half-life anyone?). They don't need or want it for their console (if they have one)...

By the way, I'm quite impressed by sony's online offering (currently in beta in europe). the few games using it seem cool (no lag, good perfs....)

Re:Some possible reasons

[PainKilleR-CE]

I'm just pointing out some things as a fairly long-time broadband online gamer, and how these things seem to be handled in the US.

* Language: many different languages are not helping it: try to say "I'll kick your ass " in portuguese, german and polish... On the other hand many europeans speak english between themselves

Having lived in California when Diablo 2 launched and played the game for quite some time from there, I can say that this is rarely an issue for most people. The number of Koreans playing on the US West servers was unbelievable, and most of them only typed in Korean. Those that didn't speak Korean ignored them. It may not bode well for teamwork and may piss off a few people on both sides of the language barrier, but to some extent you either learn to communicate with one another or ignore it. This is where I think in-game localized macros can help out extensively. Look at the little online games that come with WindowsXP. They have a small selection of things you can send to the other player which have been localized for the different versions of Windows and they get most points across. Sure, you can't have a conversation with the person, but it does the job for the most basic things. I think this could be done with most games at some level, and believe this may already have been done with a few games.

* Broadband access: Even in rich countries like Switzerland and Germany, broadband is not quite the rage. And at least sony's offering is broadband only, no modems allowed...


Broadband penetration in the US varies greatly by region. Cable availability has a lot to do with it. That being said, I haven't seen a concentrated offering on Sony's part, and don't know what exactly they have in terms of hardware. I know that Microsoft's offering is broadband only, and that Nintendo offers both a network adapter and a modem for their console.

* PCs: people buy broadband because they have a PC, and guess what, they already play games on it (Half-life anyone?). They don't need or want it for their console (if they have one)...


I already have a cable router hooked up to share my broadband connection with multiple PCs. I'm currently considering getting a wireless cable router to hook up all of my consoles to it and then have them all connect to the main cable router through the wireless connection. The fact that I already have a broadband connection for my PC makes it *easier* to justify connecting my consoles. The only thing I'm really waiting for is to have at least 2 games for the XBox that I want to play online before shelling out the money for the Live kit. I may connect up all of the consoles before I'm even ready to play anything online simply to spread the cost out over time (much like I bought some of my GBA and GC games before I had the systems knowing that I would want to play the games asap, and knowing that I got good prices on the games).

They're slow...

[AlexMax2742]

They're slow...but they're catching on.

Just last night, I was playing Mechassault with two people from Holland, and they seemed to enjoy online gameing quite a bit.