PlayStation 2 Celebrates One Year Online

Thanks to Yahoo! for hosting the Sony press release celebrating the first anniversary of the PlayStation 2 online adaptor, as well as new figures showing "more than 780,000 gamers with online connectivity." By comparison, a recent Taipei Times article says that Microsoft has 500,000 Xbox Live subscribers worldwide. The release stresses the differences between the PS2's 'open' philosophy and Xbox Live's more managed attitude, pointing out: "...the results of the open model approach include more than 20 publishers developing more than 50 titles for the PlayStation 2 platform by the year-end." Sony also trails the PS2 hard drive with regard to Final Fantasy XI, but hint at other uses, saying it "...further demonstrates the company's focus on extending the functionalities and capabilities of the PlayStation 2 for a total living room experience including games, movies and music."

Comments

Statistics can prove anything

[Locky]

The installed userbase for the PS2 is several times that of the Xbox. Pronouncing victory is quite foolish as per customer, Microsoft is having much more success with Xbox Live than Sony is with their online facility.

Re:Statistics can prove anything

[MMaestro]

Indeed. The PS2 has sold something like 30 billion systems (correct me if I'm wrong) while the XBox hasn't even sold half of that. If the PS2 only has 780,000 gamers online at this point, they are doing horribly in terms of online capabilities.

Everquest has something like 500,000 registered users, and thats for a 4+ year old MMORPG game on the PC. Its not a fair statement to compare consoles to PCs, but it sounds to me like Sony's flagship machine is being trounced by their own decommissioned flagship game.

Re:Statistics can prove anything

[unclethursday]

Xbox Live has a better market penetration, percentage wise.....

But the fact also remains that the 500k mark for XBL has been touted for months, without changing. It looks like most of the people who wanted XBL have it; and with the dealy of Halo 2 until next year, the prospect of new people signing up for it before Halo 2's release is slim.

And when you also consider over half of the total subscriptions were from the North American launch (almost 300k from November 15 - December 31), and most of the rest are from the Japanese and European launches, it shows most XBL users are early adoptors, and the majority of the Xbox owning population either doesn't have the broadband capabilites, doesn't care about online games, or both.

XBL got a good start, but its ability to draw in new subscribers just doesn't seem to be there; at least until Halo 2 comes out.

Thursdae

"Online Connectivity"

[dafoomie]

"more than 780,000 gamers with online connectivity."

What does this mean? Is it that 780,000 people have signed up, or that 780,000 people own PS2 online adaptors? I could say that 100% of Xbox's have "online connectivity" because every Xbox has an ethernet port built in. I think these numbers are very deceptive.

Take this with a gigantic grain of salt. This is a press release written by Sony. Of course the numbers are skewed in Sony's favor. Just like how Microsoft press releases say that Windows is a stable and secure operating system.

Re:xbox live

[Yaztromo]

I own an Xbox and I used to own a ps2. I broke it and took it back to best buy under my service plan and got an xbox. It is sooooo much better as a gaming platform and the online gaming is superb. On the ps2 you get to pay a monthly fee for each game you play unless the publisher is nice enough to give you a flat rate for all the games from that publisher/cartel(sony).

Feel glad I just used up the rest of my modpoints. Otherwise, I would have rated this -1: Troll.

It's blatently false. Out of the (quoted) 50 PS2 titles that will support online gaming by the end of the year, only TWO will charge any sort of fee: FFXI, and Everquest Online Adventures. This is as opposed to the Xbox, where you can't play _any_ games without paying a monthly fee to Microsoft.

Oh and just to add...the ps2 only supports 5.1 in cutscenes whereas the xbox supports it ingame

This is also false. A number of PS2 titles support 5.1 surround via DTS encoding, wheras the Xbox only supports Dolby Digital encoding. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, SSX: Tricky, and NHL 2003 are three titles that support in-game DTS surround.

For someone who "used to own a PS2", you certainly don't know much about it, do you?

Yaz.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[Yaztromo]

PS2 are probably mostly dialup. Broadband is the future; if you want good gaming without lag, you need broadband. And if you want a broadband platform where all your opponents have broadband, you must choose Xbox.

Ever play Frequency or Amplitude online? Both of these games support a mix of broadband and dialup users, and I have never seen an issue playing with people with different connection types.

Sony was smart. They made it possible for a game to specifically function with only one connection type. Take SOCOM for example: it doesn't support the dialup element of the adapter, because it just won't work.

Sony made it so the game developers can decide wether or not to target just broadband users, or everyone. There are a lot of styles of games that work quite well on a dialup connection.

And in this big old world, there are still lots of places where telephone lines are readily available, but where broadband is not. Personally, I applaud a company that is willing to embrace players in remote (or odd) areas where broadband simply isn't an option.

Yaz.