I agree with you on this. I had a reply up top that was basically stating that sure, there are people that love gaming by themselves or when they have people over. Thats definitely cool and hey, we're all here to enjoy the games. Basically though, the trend is heading towards easy online access for people to play together, whether its friends who used to play N64 on a couch vs each other who are now 100s of miles apart, or complete strangers, gaming itself is becoming naturally more social.
Does this mean single player gamers will be weeded out? Of course not! And developers will always be catering to both crowds. I think the major flaw in this article is that the analyst assumes that most of the gaming world are gamers who stray from online games and gaming, but its becoming pretty clear that online gaming itself has become really popular with people of many age groups.
There's definitely 2 camps on the issue, and each enjoy their gaming as much as the other, but go about it in different approaches. The more developers and companies like m$oft cater to both, the more money they rack in by appeasing both crowds.
As I said before, this is going to be a very, very interesting year for gaming.
Charles, I believe you are correct on all counts. I think if people look past anti-m$ sentiment for a second and examine some facts, the "analyst" who wrote this article could not be more dead wrong. Here are some facts:
No one really knows how many people were on xbox live with the original console. And anything as far as information gathered on it was little more than speculation, as Microsoft (like many others) did not release subscription numbers as far as I can remember.
Secondly, the "big push" is indeed toward online gaming. Xbox Live (at least on the 360) is one of the best facilitations for online console gaming than has ever been created. I have never used something that was so easy to hook up with friends and play games online. I wish I had the percentage in front of me, but Gamespot had done an article a while back that was basically explaining how the entire gaming market is going online, and most people ARE playing games for more social interaction than real life usually allows. Do people play them to escape as well? Absolutely.
But I do think the video gaming world is going to be in for quite a shock in the next few months. Sony scrapped plans for an online service with the PS3. With Xbox Live, unless you're playing some kind of MMO, you have one flat subscription fee for ALL your online games. PS3 left it up to developers to make their own multiplayer servers and components... This is going to lead (like it did on PS2) to seperate subscriptions for seperate games, a marketing tactic that rarely works outside of the PC world.
Is Microsoft on the right track pushing console gaming into such ease of online access? Absolutely. While it is at times satisfying knowing you got a record "hi score" in a game and can share it with some of your friends, being able to share achievments with the rest of the online gaming world is another animal all entirely.
This is the way of the video-gaming future... you can put stock in that;)
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you on this. I had a reply up top that was basically stating that sure, there are people that love gaming by themselves or when they have people over. Thats definitely cool and hey, we're all here to enjoy the games. Basically though, the trend is heading towards easy online access for people to play together, whether its friends who used to play N64 on a couch vs each other who are now 100s of miles apart, or complete strangers, gaming itself is becoming naturally more social.
Does this mean single player gamers will be weeded out? Of course not! And developers will always be catering to both crowds. I think the major flaw in this article is that the analyst assumes that most of the gaming world are gamers who stray from online games and gaming, but its becoming pretty clear that online gaming itself has become really popular with people of many age groups.
There's definitely 2 camps on the issue, and each enjoy their gaming as much as the other, but go about it in different approaches. The more developers and companies like m$oft cater to both, the more money they rack in by appeasing both crowds.
As I said before, this is going to be a very, very interesting year for gaming.
Charles, I believe you are correct on all counts. I think if people look past anti-m$ sentiment for a second and examine some facts, the "analyst" who wrote this article could not be more dead wrong. Here are some facts:
;)
No one really knows how many people were on xbox live with the original console. And anything as far as information gathered on it was little more than speculation, as Microsoft (like many others) did not release subscription numbers as far as I can remember.
Secondly, the "big push" is indeed toward online gaming. Xbox Live (at least on the 360) is one of the best facilitations for online console gaming than has ever been created. I have never used something that was so easy to hook up with friends and play games online. I wish I had the percentage in front of me, but Gamespot had done an article a while back that was basically explaining how the entire gaming market is going online, and most people ARE playing games for more social interaction than real life usually allows. Do people play them to escape as well? Absolutely.
But I do think the video gaming world is going to be in for quite a shock in the next few months. Sony scrapped plans for an online service with the PS3. With Xbox Live, unless you're playing some kind of MMO, you have one flat subscription fee for ALL your online games. PS3 left it up to developers to make their own multiplayer servers and components... This is going to lead (like it did on PS2) to seperate subscriptions for seperate games, a marketing tactic that rarely works outside of the PC world.
Is Microsoft on the right track pushing console gaming into such ease of online access? Absolutely. While it is at times satisfying knowing you got a record "hi score" in a game and can share it with some of your friends, being able to share achievments with the rest of the online gaming world is another animal all entirely.
This is the way of the video-gaming future... you can put stock in that