Slashdot Mirror
Online Games Boom - Who Benefits?
Next Generation has a piece looking, in some depth, at who exactly is benefiting from the boom in online gaming. From the article: "Electronic Arts provides a prime example of the struggles traditional publishers have faced when it comes to online games. Back around the turn of the century, the market visionaries at EA boldly declared that online games would be a prime driver of future growth and would account for as much as 20% of revenue in a mere three years (by 2003). EA even set-up a separate stock for its online game holdings. Since that time, Electronic Art's growth has been nothing short of spectacular. However, that growth has not been because of online games. This is despite the fact that EA is a leader in an emerging online game category, subscription-based casual games. "
I don't think size is as important. I don't think big ensures success (eg: profits). All one really needs is enough user base to over the costs of development and operations--everything above that is gravy.
Project Entropia has been around for like 8 years now. At first, there were not many players. But today they have over 300K players. Second Life has been around for about 3 yrs and is boasting around 30K user base. And these games are going strong. I'm sure theres lot of other games that have made it by being small too.