Which Console Is Leading The Online Race?

Thanks to GameSpy for their 'Sole Food' editorial discussing which console has the lead in the online marketplace. The author says: "If you asked me a year ago which console would be the online leader, I would have said Microsoft Xbox - no doubt." But, twelve months later, he's rapidly drawing other conclusions: "I forgot the most important lesson in publishing: Content is king. And most of the killer online content is not on the Xbox, but rather the Sony PlayStation 2." And, after citing specific examples of great titles on both PS2 and Xbox, he concludes: "There's just more games for the PS2, ergo there are more online games. It doesn't matter how good and how uniform the online user interface is if the content isn't there."

Comments

hardcore vs casual

[*weasel]

hardcore gamers make up the majority of the xbox numbers. naturally you'd expect to find more of them in a college setting.

ps2 sales have predominately been to casual gamers. why else could the ps2 have 4x the installed base and yet there's still an actual competition on the game sales chart each month?
one would expect even a halfway decent title for the ps2 to have 2x the numbers as a good xbox game, and yet that doesn't happen.

because xbox gamers buy more games. because they have more hardcore gamers - and hardcore gamers buy more games.

hell, alot of the ps2 installed base was solely due to the dvd playback functionality. that and 'playstation' was the name on the tongues of parents come the holiday season. 'xbox' is relatively new, and parents are always buying last generation's winnner. (note strong n64 console sales despite ps1 overall dominance)

but frankly, i could care less whether there are 'more' people on one service or not. pc gaming taught me that you're better off -not- playing than playing against HPBs. it just isn't fun to try to shoot someone with a 400ms ping. xbl does its damndest to minimize lag, and for that i applaud it. (though they'd do better to have more highbandwidth dedicated servers like unreal has)

microsoft had the foresight to realize that a consistant, quality experience was the way to bring console gamers online to stay.

Sony's just trying to keep up, and as the original poster pointed out - is leading due to their raw numbers. keep in mind, their lead isn't that significant, and their product is -free-. microsoft can not only charge for their better product - but they can charge -and- compete with free.

that's an achievement.