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PS2 Online User Base Passes 1.4 million
Jane_the_Great writes "The number of PS2 owners who have ventured online with their consoles has passed 1.4 million users. This article cites SCEA Executive VP Andrew House as saying, "What I think is particularly interesting is, not only are we seeing a lot of the numbers being driven off the Network Adapter bundle, but consistently there are sales of the standalone Network Adapter." Does this growth signal the arrival of online console gaming? And if there are so many people online, why can't I find someone that will play Madden 2005 like a reasonable and polite person?"
Lets rememeber not everyone purchased a PS2 Network Adapter to go online. Almost all the people I know, have used them to hook up hard drives, and the rip games to it.
HD LOADER, most any bargain-of-the-week HD, and a little time and you can have 60+ games on your PS2, without needing a single CD.
What's funny is, every night about 10pm, me and 2 others join into UT2k4 matches. Lately it's mostly been assault, but we've been known to kick butt through invasion and others.
:) but never take it to the point of annoyance.
The point is though, we've only ever left certain servers for two reasons:
1. Once (note that: ONCE) there was a guy chatting on the server, repeating himself over and over and over (the text to speech stuff.) We got annoyed and left after the round was up.
2. Bad maps. Some user-made maps are just nuts.... one we played last night for example was so not fun - you couldn't get away from your spawn point (a no-no in an assault map, since the defaults usually have a gun to defend you the first few seconds of life...) We left since we knew once we were defending, we'd probably be doing the same thing. for 20 minutes.
So, on the internet gaming side of things, it appears people are a little nicer. We'll make jokes with other guys and have fun with some of their names (especially clan names
Karnal
Yeah, there needs to be a jackass-ometer big time.
A level of feedback that doesn't necessarily lead to being kicked off xbox live (which the current 'feedback' system is geared toward). But instead just focuses on communicating who's immature.
In the short term though, XBL just needs 'leagues', so to speak.
Allow gamers to segregate themselves based on their self-perceived proficiency or intent, and the remaining smaller groups can police the abberant jerks with the existing 'ignore' and 'feedback' options.
Let the jackasses battle it out on 'ranked' or '1337' servers, and if they intentionally join an 'over 40' or 'casual' game to heckle people, that's justifiably harassment, and ignore/feedback as appropriate.
And to stave off the inevitable: it shouldn't allow any player rankings to be visible from one league to another. killcount in a casual game should have no bearing or effect on your '1337' league-standing.
Back on topic: I think it's more telling that XBL is approaching 1 million paying customers. Considering that no-one has ever paid specifically for the privilege of playing non-persistent games online before, it's quite an achievement that they presented an experience that 700k+ console gamers think is worth paying for.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Agreed. I decided to give FFXI a try against my better judgement - I'd been a beta tester for EverQuest Online Adventures, and didn't enjoy it much - it just seemed repetitive and got old fast.
So I coughed up the bucks for FFXI ($100! - with the HDD) and tried it out. That was over Memorial Day weekend. I've never looked back - there is so much to this game I discover something new every time I play.
Now games fall into two categories: FFXI and everything else. I'm looking forward to MGS3 and Killzone and Halo 2. But - then I'd have to stop playing FFXI! I don't know what I'll do...