Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's Big Bet on Online Gaming
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "The Wall Street Journal Online analyzes the prospects of the Xbox's online-gaming component. Analysts say Microsoft has spent hundreds of millions on Xbox Live, with little guarantees of returns. 'It is not clear that companies like Microsoft and Sony will be able to lure large numbers of players -- each has attracted a small fraction of users to online play with their previous consoles,' WSJ Online writes. 'The companies also must be careful about new business models for distributing games -- such as games-on-demand -- so as not to alienate game publishers, who still rely heavily on in-store sales. And games designed for multiple players have a mixed record of attracting customers.' Says analyst Michael Pachter, 'At the end of the day, we don't play games for social interaction ... We play games to escape.' Microsoft's strategy is 'absolutely flawed,' he added.""
I don't play games to escape anything. It's like saying "You build model boats to escape from society". That's utter bullshit. Hell, I'll go to a local computer gaming place to kick the crap out of all the people there in Counter Strike as a social interaction.
Next time someone wants to tell me why I'm playing video games, tell it to my face.
The prisoner of hope is sustained and encouraged by his hope, even as he is confined by it.
Online gaming is about gaming getting back to it's roots - "me vs. you". Playing against a console is essentially a souped-up version of solitaire. Fun, distracting, but nothing like the rush of defeating an opponent with the same chance of victory as defeat.
What a load. I guess he never played Battlefield 2. The social interaction against real humans vs bots is crystal clear to me. This seems just another MS slam article where something obviously not true becomes true becuase it is associated with MS. Yet another proud achievement of the Slashdot editorial stance.
3.5 million customers x $15/month is nothing to sneeze at.
I would have to completely disagree with the idea that people play games to escape. Gaming, especially for younger people, is a hugely social thing. Walk around a college campus in the dorms and you'd be hard pressed to not find a multiplayer Halo game going on. While some may use games to escape, I think the trend is towards social gaming.
And how many people play World of Warcraft, again?
Right. No money to be made in the online gaming market.
Shinma
The only game I play that isn't about playing with other people is Civilization IV. Otherwise, every game I enjoy has some element of either a) competition, b) cooperation, or c) both. Counter-strike, WoW, etc, would be the most prominent examples for me.
If people don't play games for social interaction, why is the chat screen constantly rolling on most multiplayer games? Why do people join clans/guilds/etc? How do you organize a 40 person raid on an imaginary dungeon? I can't get 40 people together in real life, but I can in a game. And that's not about social interaction?
---- keep it simple.
I agree. After I kicked my Everquest habit a few years back, playing single-player games seems to be lacking something. Even playing solo, an online game adds an extra dimension with the random encounters with other players and the background chatter. A single-player game now seems to me to be very quiet and isolated. Sometimes that's a good thing, but being online with other players can add more depth to a player's experience.
I've said before, I'm concerned about Microsoft's huge push into "online" with the new 360 console. Its way too soon, and they seem to be trying to tie everything about Xbox into the "Live" service. If it isn't already obvious, this is Microsoft's attempted way of extracting monthly revenue out of their customers. You can see it in the way they are now re-attempting to push web services like Office Live and .NET.
Microsoft wants that monthly charge, from everybody. But they are pushing way too hard with this generation of console, especially since they never garnered more than 10% or so of original Xbox players. We should rename Live to MS Wallet, or more specifically MS Hand In Your Wallet.
{ - Generic Guy - }
I've got three teenage kids who will sit for hours, if I let them, on XBox Live and chat with friends while playing Halo 2, America's Army and other "team" games.
When not on live, they also browse MySpace and usually are chatting with IM clients. Yes, they get outside plenty. When you live up north (northern hemisphere) and it gets dark less than an hour after school gets out, going outside to play isn't an attractive option.
Instead of having to have multiple phone lines, or even cell phones for the kids, they all chat with friends -- local and long distance -- via XBox Live & IM.
Microsoft is spot on and when looking at new consoles next year, the question will be does the PS3 and Revolution have a good online community and voice chat? If not, XBox 360 it will be.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
"Says analyst Michael Pachter, 'At the end of the day, we don't play games for social interaction ... We play games to escape.' Microsoft's strategy is 'absolutely flawed,' he added.""
Wow, this "analyst" just shredded his credibility with that whopper. He is obviously extrapolating HIS gaming experience to EVERYONE. Blanket generalizations are almost always wrong. He should probably buy a copy of WOW, Battlefield etc, install a copy of vent and come to grips with the fact that millions of people are playing games precisely FOR THE SOCIAL INTERACTION.
Its a simple fact of life that AI's in games are still generally weak and playing against a computer quickly gets old. There is way more satisfaction of beating other human beings than in beating a mediocre AI.
The sweet deal about games like WOW are they are a constant revenue stream of people paying monthly subscriptions versus the boom or bust cycle of sell a box in the store, get a bunch of revenue and then go dry for years while you develop the next one. This is the dream revenue model for companies like Microsoft because it pleases Wall Street to have consistent revenue streams... if your game doesn't suck.
@de_machina
I think I see what he is saying by the last sentence in the summary. I, too, have noticed a focus on "social interaction" stuff lately. Chat, messages, etc. While these are valuable for strategerizing and chatting with friends in the game, I don't go online to dink around and "chat" with strangers. Not to say that I don't talk to strangers -- I do. But I don't look to make new friends or anything and it seems like a lot of these services are aimed at linking people in a social way. As in -- meeting new people and making new friends.
The difference is subtle but there. When I game, the chatting, etc is pertinent only for the game. If I want to meet new ppl or find a date, I go elsewhere. Taking my online gaming and trying to make it a "social interaction" *IS* the wrong approach.
And I think that is what he is talking about here.
This is the exact system that Microsoft wants to use for it's other applications. They want you to buy Word monthly, or yearly. They want you to pay for a service rather than "own" the program. Briliantly they are testing the idea in their lackluster gaming system before moving it over to their applications.
Next you're going to see an application "Office 360" that replaces your computer desktop and only allows you to do your desktop job... one ap at a time.
Brilliant.
This article really sheds light on a fundamental dichotomy : hardcore gamers versus the rest of the public. As I'm sure most slashdotters will post here in a second, online gaming CAN be and generally is far more engrossing and much, much harder than any single player game. Online is also much more technically complex which is the real reason why it's only recently come to consoles : you need a voice chat or keyboard, and to get the kind of smooth gameplay console players are used to you need broadband. So to hardcore gamers like us, there's not even a second's thought : the vast majority of the games in the xbox lineup will be more fun online, if the game is written well enough technically to support it. (for instance, games like Gears of War will probably be a lot of fun Co-op if that game supports it smoothly)
Further, WoW/other MMORPGs and the Battlefield series I think offer some of THE most intense gaming available in any form, anywhere. No console solo or online game or PC game can really touch the intensity and complexity of these games. (and the difficulty level, especially in Battlefield. Even n00bs shoot me down and gun me down every 5-10 kills I get, which is a far harder game that most solo ones)
But the regular public, the joes on the streets who buy game consoles by the millions and make up the "average", fat, T.V. watching, braindead gameplay game playing, Geography ignorant, stereotyping and racially biased, Americans? Who the hell knows what sort of trash they'll really buy. Unfortunatly for us, they make up the real market that Microsoft needs to make money from, and it seems that Microsoft, composed mostly of top C.S. graduates, thinks more like we do.
"'At the end of the day, we don't play games for social interaction ..."
I personally play ONLY games against/with real people like Counter-Strike multiplayer,
single-player is not for me, playing against "bots" is a dead-end play, I never play single player games.
Online gamming is the next logical step. Microsoft is on the right track.
In the old days we would compete in sports, in activities outside involving endurance and training. Microsoft realizes just because people don't get out as much, they still have the desire to compete. They are providing an arena to bring people together to challenge each other and see who is better. Yes it is a social situation, but do you really ever know somebody named PIMPN8EZ? The more exciting you make it, the more games they sell. We are all addicted to anything that makes the heart go faster. How the games are distributed is not as important as that they continue to come out with as many titles as possible that are well made and exciting.
Few things here - first off, men generally don't game with the intent of social interaction - they do however tend to play online because human opponents offer a different challenge to bots and scripted encounters.
Second, the terrifying success of WoW, Everquest, CoH, etc. would suggest that games with some basis in social interaction are actually mind bogglingly popular.
Also, as a vapid generalisation, you tend to see women playing games with some degree of focus on social interaction. (I was going to use the Sims as an example here, but a moment's thought reminded me that the Sims is actually just an extension of the doll principle, having nothing whatsoever to do with social interaction.)
fortune -o
Many people have found Guild Wars to be the answer to your A ... As for B...Probably not likely (but a neat idea).
I feel that XBox Live is for very young children and just-made-it-to-teenager's. Every time they use the talk function they sound prepubescent or 5 years old. My roommate plays a lot of Halo 2 on Live, but he's nowhere near as good as those 5 year olds. I think it's awesome that preteens have a safe place to go to kill eachother for a modest monthly fee. WTG MS!
Why would you trust a testimonial when choosing hosting?
All skill level concerns aside, there's just something more fun about knowing you beat another human being. Often the humans I play online are inferior in skill to the bots in the game but I still have more fun at it.
Also, for many people social interaction is not an insignificant part of online gaming. I left a guild in World of Warcraft because it became in essence a big support group. Not what I was after, but there were plenty of people who liked it that way.
All I have to say to this idiot author is "Blizzard, bitch." Five million people paying them about $15 per month, for the privledge of playing just one game online (on top of their ISP fees). Know what? I'm going to say that there's something to the whole online gameing thing, to the tune of a billion dollars a year in Blizzard's case.
Consoles and PCs are entirely different media setups, and generally encourage different types of gaming.
:) ). The single keyboard and mouse set are the primary input devices, used by a single user at a time, no extras. The games they encourage revolve around longer play sessions, with more private communication.
In my experience, the vast majority of consoles in family homes are hooked up to the biggest TV set in the household, be it in the living room or family room/den. These are generally shared, communal spaces, with competition for screen time an issue (whether it be for watching cable TV, a Tivo'ed program, or console playing). The joysticks are the input devices that games are built around, which allow for local one-on-one play alongside networked play.
The PC, on the other hand, is often in a bedroom or office, tucked away in a more private location. The monitor is far smaller, lending itself to more intimate experiences (no, not pr0n...well, not all the time
In short, Microsoft's attempts to bring the intimacy of the PC setting, and the monthly fees intimate games can bring (MMOs and gambling games, for example) to the console setting is a prima facie failure. You simply cannot reliably get enough eyes to sit in front of the (shared) TV to play an online game and make it worthwhile.
RW
Life happens. Getting married, having kids, or just having an actual full-time job substract from the hours the young'uns used to spend playing.
I used to clock at least 15 hours a week in videogames a few years back. Now that I'm married, college done and I have a full time job, I rarely put more than 5. And even though I can navigate my way through most of the hardcore stuff of today, I'm beginning to appreciate more games where the learning curve is well integrated in them and don't take forever to finish.
What many people seem to be forgetting is that current generations of kids are interacting in a way that's totally different from what many of us experienced growing up.
If you had told me when I was a kid that I should be chatting with friends through VOIP while playing Space Quest, I don't think I would have given you the time of day. In fact, I'd probably try to urinate on you or something. It just wasn't part of my world.
Now, though, kids spent a *lot* of time getting together online - through IM, myspace, games, and other technologies. It's a fact of life for them, and it's only going to grow for the coming generations.
To say that the strategy is "Absolutely flawed" is to look at one segment of the gaming population without considering where *everything* is trending, and that's toward online activity.
I've seen a lot of arguments here of the "Well, I don't like the idea, so it must suck dog balls" variety, but you have to remember that there is a universe outside your own - there are plenty of people who *do* live huge chunks of their social lives through online interactions.
- Rory [Microsoft Employee] | Free dirt: neopoleon.com
Something that isn't even mentioned in the article is this. We know that Microsoft sells the XBox for a big loss- I recall hearing that the number was around $75 per system, initially at launch. I have come to believe that the original plan was to make that money back on XBox Live subscriptions. Think about this- if every XBox user bought Live and paid for four years, Microsoft makes $200 per user just off Live. Heck, if less than half of XBox users paid for a Live subscription and kept it for four years it would pay off the losses incurred from the system. At the same time they could sell a more powerful system for the same price as some of the competition (PS2 and XBox are the same price to this day- interestingly, the GameCube is at a lower price yet is more powerful than the PS2 and sold at a profit).
Unfortunately, the percentage of users on XBox Live is much smaller (the numbers I hear are 10-20%). Microsoft took a big loss on the XBox. And now they are doing it again, but this time they are trying to make Live much more appealing- with the Arcade and demos and trailers, they want people to be willing to get Live even if they don't want to play any games online. If they can get the majority of XBox users to pay for Live, they can keep selling more powerful systems for losses to keep ahead on the competition.
Also unfortunately, it seems the competition have other ideas. Sony is gambling that by putting a Blu-ray player in every home, they'll make a fortune off of Blu-ray, so they're willing to sell the PS3 for an even higher loss than Microsoft ever did methinks- even if they take an overall loss on their games division, they'll take the loss and gain total control over the movie market. And Nintendo has the right idea- they said, "You know what, it's stupid to throw away money and sell for a massive loss and lose profitableness for bragging points on who has the most powerful system. We're out of this race- we'll sell a lower priced system with free online play, hundreds of downloadable classic games and a controller that gives you new ways of play. Having slightly better graphics than your competitor isn't so important anymore."
And to the above poster:
There was an interesting interview in this month's Maxim with the head game designer at Nintendo (I think that is his title, he is the guy that invented Mario Bros etc.)
He said the big challenge is that games have become so complex, that there are no casual gamers. That the world has been divided into two types of people: those who play games, and those who don't play games.
I see his point- I haven't played a video game in years, aside from ones that can be learned in 5 minutes. I just don't have the time to spend hours every day attaining levels and learning complex controls and commands.
That would be Shigeru Miyamoto. Yeah. He also said in the interview that Nintendo wanted to change all that with the Revolution controller being so intuitive and easy.
I've noticed that tendency. Games are becoming staggeringly complicated; on some Adventure games and RPG's I'll get halfway through the game before I realize what some of the items I have can be used for. There aren't many games that can be learned in five minutes, except maybe Burnout 3 (that button is accelerate, that one is brake, that on is boost, try to run into other cars, game learned!).
Microsoft has never really been a company to take risks. They pump the totality into a market into they win. I guess you could say the Xbox & Xbox live was a risk if:
A) The gaming market had not been established for almost 30 years beforehand.
B) Microsoft wasn't 2nd in the market right now.
To me the question isn't "who will win the gaming console battle" or "will Xbox live succeed". To me the question is really "whose vision will prevail in the home-computer-electronics-content merger" -- the players there being Sony, Microsoft, Apple, and the cable companies. Each having an upper hand in one area, but trying actively to get into the others.
may i suggest "we love katamari" as a good title for you to try... simple to learn, and the longest time commitment is 20 minutes.
none of these required sidequests where you have to go crossbreed giant racing chickens for months just to advance the game.
... hi bingo
Having a good friends list on Xbox Live goes a LONG way toward taking care of this problem. I can spend a couple hours playing Perfct Dark Zero with a group of friends, enjoy the joking around and such that comes from talking to friends, all without having to deal with obnoxious little brats and cheaters. If I hadn't been able to put together a good friends list rather quickly, I suspect I would have let my 2 month Live trial expire and stopped playing on live. Instead, I've made a bunch of friends and can't imagine not gaming with them.
And games that do it right - like Halo 2 - let you take a group of your friends into a game so you can take other groups of people. Even the annoying little brats aren't as bad when you're playing against them with a team full of friends - and beating the snot out of them.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
The problem lies in the skill level of "me" and "you". Battlefield2 not only had a steep learning curve for the game itself, but I got on a couple of months after launch and I was faced with guys that were very difficult to beat. I got creamed left and right.
Now I love a challenge, so I kept playing, but I know a lot of people who would've given up after they got killed a couple of dozen times without killing hardly any of the enemy in return. You'd never consider pitting little leaguers against an MLB team, or even a minor league team, but it happens all the time on BF2 servers. In order for online gaming to take off, there's going to have to be the equivilent of different leagues or divisions where newbies can start off playing other newbies then advance to moderate play and then on to expert. Until this happens, many people will be too embarrased, afraid, or bored (respawn again!?!?!) to play online.
In addition to pitting the propper players against each other, you also need to let them get to know each other. Here again, BF2 falls short. When waiting between maps in Counter Strike, it was easy to keep up a conversation about the good, bad and ugly of the last round. In BF2, all communication ceases. Isn't online play supposed to be a social activity?
And here's the most important reason why online play is superior to single-player play (at least for me): I love playing against other people. People do increadibly smart and increadibly stupid things. People will laugh with you when you do something funny and laugh at you when you do something stupid. If you come around a corner alone only to face 7 guys on the other team, everyone is gonna laugh their ass off while they blow you away. You'll laugh too. In a single player game, you're just going to load the last save. No one cares if you blast 500 bad guys in five minutes in Serious Sam, but if you shoot your best friend in the back while he's ever so slowly trying to sneak up on his girlfriend, well, you might just get a kiss on the cheek and a sock on the shoulder the next time you see them. That's far more what life is all about.
TW
It was sometime in the early 80's when I played two games regularly - Ultima III and Quest for Sorcery. Ultima III is easy enough to understand / look up. Quest for Sorcery was a multi-player text adventure ran on Major BBS systems (the system I played on had 8 lines). Quest had no stats - your ability to interact within the world (and even combat other players) was entirely based on your knowledge of how to use various objects and utter the right commands. Combat was not common but there was a competition to solve all the puzzles in the game.
One day, after playing Quest for a good part of the week, I loaded up Ultima... and it was... flat. It had lost its magic. It just wasn't fun any more. And I suddenly realized why. The night before, I had been playing Quest and was working on one of the puzzles when the following text appeard on my screen:
A strong gust of wind whips through the room.
Simple. But the implications were very important. Someone in the game had just figured out how to do something new. And that was the catch - a world where other people affected your environment was somehow much more... interesting than the static world of single-player games.
A side note to all this... I met Richard Garriot at a science fair that year. I noted to him how Ultima just wasn't as fun despite all its content and graphics. That a (relatively) simple text game had trumped it due to one very important aspect - muti-player environment. And, by the way, wouldn't it be cool if Ultima could be like that? Richard seemed to like the idea and invited me to call him at a later time... but I never did manage to get ahold of him again. Years later, and more likely due to natural progression rather than anything I said, Ultima Online made its debut.
How well did Doom 3 do this year compared to Half-life 2/Counterstrike Source? Doom 3 did not fair very well. Sure, everyone was excited about Doom 3 and it's singe player mode was fun, but once you beat it - the game was quite boring. The multiplayer aspect was well below par. Quake 4 was supposed to change that, but it doesn't seem to have taken off either. Multiplayer > Single player. period.
Honestly, there's just no way to make a machine as complex as a console anymore without being able to issue updates. Heck, even the launch GAMES are buggy as crap (PGR3 awarded me -250,000CR for winning a series just last night). So you're going to have to have online capability for the consoles. And you're going to have to be able to send out code over it.
The stuff they did is just an extension of that. Once you can download code and content, why not put some stuff up for free publicity? Once you already sell "track packs" (see PGR2 on Xbox), why not sell entire micro games?
You're gonna want to update the "BIOS" on the machine to thwart modchips anyway...
All this came more by necessity than anything else, and so I fully expect you'll see similar stuff from Sony, who isn't otherwise known for being keen on online. Heck, they'll have to send out patches to fix their BluRay video player ability, since it's going to be just about the first one of its kind and complex as heck (it uses Java!).
We also expect Nintendo is going to do this too, since they said the "Revolution will be infinitely backwards-compatible". They meant that it will play NES, SNES and N64 games. Well, it doesn't have 3 cartridge slots on it, so where will the game ROM images come from? Answer, they'll sell them to you again over the internet.
It's just business in today's world. MS isn't really striking out much or taking much of a gamble.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
This is the intent and the beauty of Xbox Live. The idea is to build a friends list of people you enjoy playing with. I can power up and see how many "friends" I have online at any given time. Buildning that list can be painful for the first month but once its built online gaming becomes a social experience.
It means, BUY BUY BUY.
It's kind of like how Real Estate agents describe shitty houses: Clean Home, Great Schools!
There's ton's of codewords out there folks. The fun thing, is outing them!
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.