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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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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