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Internet Gaming Has Not Yet Peaked
heartless_ writes "The Korean Game Conference is under way and Raph Koster has posted his notes on Bill Roper's keynote. According to Roper, the internet has not yet peaked. There are 1 billion Net users. That's 130,000,000 more than last year. There's a lot of growth left for online games. More, that growth number has been steady for the last few years. Bridging the gap between PC and console gamers was on tap and Koster stated in regard to the keynote... 'I don't know if the PS3 and 360 are really going to be the convergence of PC and console and online. It is encouraging to see MS announce 1m customers for Live-but really, for a lot of online games happens in the first few hours.'" Additionally, with no central service for the PS3 will that many people make the jump online when the console launches?
The last 50 feet... from the router to the television.
Sure, many techies and early adopters have either network cables or wireless access covering the whole house. But the "average joe" gamer has his internet connection in one part of the house (where he has a desk to set the computer at), and his TV w/ game consoles in another part of the house (where he can set his butt down at). It's often not the easiest task to get an internet connection from one to the other, especially if you have kids/a spouse/pets to keep the wires safe and invisible from.
Hopefully with the new consoles and with the increasingly cheaper costs to go wireless, this will not be as big of a problem in the future, but until this is resolved, online gaming will still only compromise a small percentage of the installed console customer base.