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

Content? It's just a matter of raw numbers!

[MBraynard]

There are about 20 mil PS2s in the US. There are maybe 7 Xbox's. Additionally, the PS2 online experience is opened up to dialup users.

As of right now, the Xbox has PS2 beat or dead even in pretty much ever catagory of game interest (Rainbow Six 3 vrs Socom2? No competition). But Xbox just doesn't have the install base to get the same numbers.

eh. Anyway, the real winner is the consumer; more than one online colsoe competitor makes gaming better not matter your preferred console.

Re:Content? It's just a matter of raw numbers!

[grahamwest]

XSN's only for first party titles to my knowledge. For reference, I'm the lead programmer on our Xbox SKU and I did the analysis of what it would take to add Xbox Live support to the game.

We could implement our own league system on Xbox Live but it would be really expensive and time-consuming (such servers have to live inside Microsoft's data center so the testing is pretty exhaustive). On PS2 we get all that stuff basically for free because we use Gamespy for our frontend (ie. lobbies, chat, matchmaking).

Of course gamers can do whatever they want informally but that doesn't compare to something integrated and supported by the developer. We can run online tournaments on PS2 and even give away prizes but currently we can't do that on Xbox Live.

Article quote

[calebtucker]

"... ergo there are more online games."

Who wants to bet he wouldn't have said "ergo" if it wasn't for the whole Architect conversation in Maxtrix: Reloaded? :-)

but PC still beats both

[incubusnb]

PS2 - 20 Million users
X-Box - 7 Million
PC - you do the counting, its simply too high

i love my PS2 and i love my X-Box, but lets face it, neither of them are even close competitors to the online gaming giant that is the PC, every Genre is covered in many different ways and has many millions of users and all times of the day or night

AND, with a CP, games that are meant for single player, can be modded for Multiplayer (ie. GTA3 & GTA: VC)

Quality VS Quantity? (and a PA quote)

[Recoil_42]

to me, this really comes down to quality vs quantity.

i sure ps2 online is great, and EA has really driven it home; however XBOX live is absolutely fantastically, exponentially better than ps2 online. freinds list, effortless patches, easy login, downloadable content, voice for *every single game*, rankings, rosters, tournaments, clans, leagues, game invites... it is practically flawless, undoubtedly the best microsoft produect i have ever encountered..

in contrast, SOCOM is plagued by cheats, (and let's face it -- no one is going to develop a game that requires a 200$ hard drive just to prevent cheats) each game requires its own accoutn and password, EA is threatening to charge 10 bucks a month per game (someting MS won't allow, which is why EA has refused to develop games for xbox live, by the way)....

also, while i dont want to scream out "BIAS!" too loud, raymond (the article's author) has always been a huge ps2 fan..

lemme just end with a huge penny-arcade quote as i always like to do.. :)

----------

It was easy to think of EA's offering and Microsoft's offering as fungible initially. EA was doing theirs for free, and Microsoft had a pay service, and obviously free is... nice. But while I was being desiccated by Las Vegas nights soaked with alcohol, it seemed to me that their service is free because it sucks. It's free because it is so without ambition that it can be offered for nothing, until such time as they want to charge for it. Why else would they reserve the right, why else would they go through all the trouble?

I've spent enough time on Live with recent titles that it's impossible for me to compare the two approaches. You don't sign in to Live, you don't create a password, you push A. Every game supports voice and a universal friends list I can view from the web. I have a hard disk built in for content. There is an ethernet port. That's not so you can put a jelly bean in there in case you need it later, it's so you can put in a cable and access the Internet. You assholes.

That is all to say nothing about game invites. If I'm playing a game by Ubi Soft, I can still receive invites to play games from other developers - each publisher doesn't have it's own little fairy land where I can only play games with other people who have their games. I can be playing Crimson Skies and get an invite to play Ghost Recon. If I say yes, the tray pops out and I put in the other disc. Then, it joins me automatically. When I can do that with games from EA, I'll shut the fuck up. Until then, they need to act like big people and make choices that are of value to consumers.

---------------

Re:Quality VS Quantity? (and a PA quote)

[bugbread]

Fair comment.

I think they're just pointing out that, while online works on both, XBox's iteration has that much more polish. Logging on in Madden is a simple process, but logging on to XBox Live...uh, well, you don't have to. Instead of selecting "1 Player" or "Multiplayer", you select "Play Online". For the most part, there is no login.

They jellybean comment just refers to the fact that the XBox has online capability from the get-go, not as an expansion pack. I don't find it a very useful statement either, though.

As for multiple folks: you can have guests on XBox online. I forget how it works (not having done it myself), but while person A is playing, people plugged into ports 2, 3, and 4 play as guests 2, 3, and 4. Obviously, if people living in the same house want their own accounts/friends lists/etc., they'd need to pay for it.

As for the friend's list: with XBox Live, you don't need to connect to a server to do anything. It's an always-on connection. You just turn on the XBox (heck, mine is on 24-7 anyway, so that's even one less step), go to the Live control panel, and you can see the online status of all of your friends, what games they're playing, and invite them directly to play. Sure, you could do the same on computer, but it just doubles the amount of equipment and work you need to do. Plus, the obvious: if they're currently playing, they aren't going to be on the computer to answer your request to play! Yeah, all of this could be done without the XBox, hell, you could call up your friend on the phone, but with the friends list it's all in one place.

I'm not going to try to convince you to buy one. It's just that your comments remind me of my dad talking about how computers are unnecessary overhead, and that if he wants to tell someone something, he doesn't need newfangled email or instant messaging, he can just call the person on the phone. Yeah, he's right, but the convenience factor is not something to be easily overlooked.

Re:Quality VS Quantity? (and a PA quote)

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire problem with the horrible monstrosity, the Xbox, is summed up in a sentence in your post.

"...effortless patches..."

"Effortless patching" will make the console game market the same cesspool of unfinished, buggy software that PC gaming currently is. Why bother to put another month of dev work into the game to polish it and fix those last few bugs, when you can just patch it after it's released?

The fact that console games were NOT patchable has meant that console game developers put a lot more effort into getting the game *right* before they release it. Release a premature console game that crashes or has other gamebreaking bugs, let that come out in a review, and your game will not sell.

"Effortless patching" is the *last* thing the console game market needs.

Re:Quality VS Quantity? (and a PA quote)

[13Echo]

EA can charge as much as they please, just as SEGA charges for PSO. That's not the issue. The problem (for Microsoft) is that EA wishes to completely bypass the XBox Live service in favor of their own. We all know what happens when Microsoft doesn't get complete and utter control of such a thing. This is the issue. Microsoft is banking on total control of online content with this platform, hence the reason for its excellent network capabilities out of the box. XBox Live is a great service, however I don't blame EA for wanting to deny Microsoft control of their own (EA's) content. This is probably why many publishers are opting to stay away from the XBox Live service. It takes control (and general income) out of their hands. I can't tell you how many times I've heard XBox PSO owners complain about having to pay *two* fees. This is the reason that the PS2 is begining to eclipse the XBox live in online games, aside from the fact that more people own PS2 consoles.

Still, a recent GameFAQs poll shows that most gamers (almost 75%) really don't care too much about online gaming with their consoles.

http://cgi.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.asp?poll=1434

Hmm... Maybe Nintendo had the right idea after all, with such a low-priority online initiative.

Re:Quality VS Quantity? (and a PA quote)

[Snowmit]

"Effortless patching" will make the console game market the same cesspool of unfinished, buggy software that PC gaming currently is. The fact that console games were NOT patchable has meant that console game developers put a lot more effort into getting the game *right* before they release it.

You're a crazy person.

There are plenty of console games that crash and generally have all kinds of bugs. Enter the Matrix leaps to mind but it isn't alone. Pick up a copy of GamePro magazine and check their monthly feature on bugs that appear in recent console games and how you can work around them. These are games that are selling well.

There are a lot of reasons that PC gamers have to deal with more bugs than console players. The biggest is that each of the consoles has standard hardware. PC programming, on the other hand, requires you to take into acount a wide variety of different hardward, driver, OS and software configurations. More unknowns means that more can go wrong.

On top of all that, effortless patching doesn't just mean "fixing bugs" it also means "adding new content". As in "here Mech Warrior player, here are some new maps for you to play". That's pretty cool and it's something that neither Nintendo nor Sony can do yet, though Sony is well on the way with their new Final Fantasy with HDD package.

the moral of the story

[Geno Z Heinlein]

It doesn't matter how good and how uniform the online user interface is if the content isn't there.

One can't help but suspect that the uniform user interface created the lack of content. Even in the general population, freedom creates more opportunities and productivity, but the game creator demographic leans more libertarian than average.

Re:the moral of the story

[PainKilleR-CE]

I think you're all arguing over an almost completely different kind of consistency than what exists with XBox Live.

The consistency has to do with the features supported and the idea that you don't have to sign into different services to play different games.

The player can use their friends list to invite people to play, regardless of what game they are playing at the moment. The service can handle the exiting from one game and loading (and connecting to a game) of the next when the user decides to accept that invitation. The user doesn't have to enter a log-in and password when 95+% of the users don't have keyboards (yes, my password to bypass the parental rating on my PS2 is XXXXXXXX or however many times I have to hit that damned button). Voice communication works the same way in every game. You find games the same way.

On the other hand, if developers want people to jump through hoops and not have voice communication or be able to invite each other to play their game (or other games), yeah, this might be a problem. If I want people to perform a KI 99-hit combo to get online in my game, maybe I should be allowed to do that. If I want to sell my customers' data to keep my struggling online business afloat, maybe I should be allowed to do that.

Do it somewhere else. EA's problem has everything to do with the last sentence in the previous paragraph and nothing to do with the rest of the paragraph. Anyone else has their own reasons, though very few seem to have been all that reluctant to support Live if they support multiplayer at all on consoles.

Re:the moral of the story

[PainKilleR-CE]

And, to reiterate, the different functionality EA wanted was primarily that they didn't want Online available for older games. That is, once SSX 3 came out, online functionality for SSX Tricky would have to be halted. Although in principle developer power sounds great, in the XBox Live case it seems that the XBox Live specifications provide developers with the tools to do what they want to do, except for hosing their users, and that is precisely what EA was being stymied at.

Unfortunately, they also haven't done online play on the Cube, despite most of their multiplatform titles being available there and the Cube's online strategy having few differences from Sony's (except, of course, that Sony's now pushing the online angle).

And don't be fooled into thinking that it is because XBox Live prevents developers from taking a cut of the profits. Phantasy Star Online charges an additional users fee that goes to the publisher.

The one thing EA wanted in this realm, though, was customer data, as stated here:
http://money.cnn.com/2003/05/14/technology/ techinv estor/hellweg/
EA gets to use the infrastructure in which it invested so heavily and collect the revenue and marketing data [by making online play available on the PS2]. Microsoft, on the other hand, built out its own infrastructure (and service, called Xbox Live) and handles the billing and customer relationships.

There's another quote which I remember also seeing in US articles (but I can't find those articles at the moment) here:
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0, 7204,73 43540%5e15321%5e%5enbv%5e15306,00.html
EA declined to join with Microsoft because it felt it would lose "ownership" of the customer, EA spokesman Jamie McKinlay said.

"The player would buy our product and then pay Microsoft to play it online. Microsoft would retain all that player information on a database and we wouldn't have access to it."

It's truly an interesting thing when Microsoft, of all people, is keeping information about your use habits from someone (especially since EA has a deal with AOL that means customer data for people playing EA games online is sold to AOL, if you'd like proof of that, read EA's privacy policy).

Consoles

[tiny69]

I have a Digital VT510 serial console sitting in front of me. I really like it since I can connect to two differnt computers via serial connections at the same time. Finding MMJ cables and DB25 --> MMJ adapters is a pain though. I also have a Digital VT420 serial console floating around here somewhere. It's possible to get NICs for them so that they can get their own IP and connect online.

Oh..., you're talking about game consoles...

My comment

[jonathan_the_ninja]

I think that any system that has a game that is worth playing is worth getting. When it comes to gaming, I just want to play the fun games.

Best Microsoft product I've encountered

[PD]

They make a damn fine Joystick (not the best, but better than most, and the best one that I've owned).

Keyboards and mice are superb too.

I also really enjoy Slashdot, which while technically not a Microsoft product, this place really gets a lot of mileage from that company.

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.