11th March 2004, 8:33 AM
The fact remains that it's extremely difficult to gauge any kind of progress or money flow in internet gaming. Especially for a home console (as opposed to the much more lucrative PC). Even then, it remains a niche market.
I think the main drive behind Nintendo's stance on internet gaming is because of how the home needs to be set up. You bring your console or console modem home, you call up your cable provider or ISP to have another signal sent in which case your probably need additional hardware as well. Your bill is now doubled to your ISP. Now you have the monthly fee from the home console developers to use their bandwidth in order to play online. Now you need to buy the game that has the option of net play, and most often than not, purchase some kind of keyboard and mouse configuration to use the menus for setting up a game and chatting to talk smack to your rivals. Now we're ready to play! After spending about 100-150 bucks upfront plus a monthly fee of realistically around 60 bucks combined; you are talking about one expensive hobby. On top of that, you have to be able to find people interested in playing the game you bought of which there are probably around 1000 of them in the entire united states. Peak times, off times, times of day and time changes all factor in to finding a rival or cooperative buddy. Ultimately, the only game you will be playing online is whatever is the most popular. To a console developer that means one genre = one demographic = low and slow sales.
As it stands right now, there is no way to consistantly cut a long-term profit through internet gaming. That means Nintendo has to make the choice of jumping in with both feet in to the realm of free online gaming, which equals out to slow connections, thin bandwithds and headaches for main stream gamers who wouldn't know a super node from a host.
However, keeping all of that in mind, online gaming is an amazing experience that is just plain fun. If it can be made consistant, it will completely change the industry. For now, it's for nerds... with deep pockets.
I think the main drive behind Nintendo's stance on internet gaming is because of how the home needs to be set up. You bring your console or console modem home, you call up your cable provider or ISP to have another signal sent in which case your probably need additional hardware as well. Your bill is now doubled to your ISP. Now you have the monthly fee from the home console developers to use their bandwidth in order to play online. Now you need to buy the game that has the option of net play, and most often than not, purchase some kind of keyboard and mouse configuration to use the menus for setting up a game and chatting to talk smack to your rivals. Now we're ready to play! After spending about 100-150 bucks upfront plus a monthly fee of realistically around 60 bucks combined; you are talking about one expensive hobby. On top of that, you have to be able to find people interested in playing the game you bought of which there are probably around 1000 of them in the entire united states. Peak times, off times, times of day and time changes all factor in to finding a rival or cooperative buddy. Ultimately, the only game you will be playing online is whatever is the most popular. To a console developer that means one genre = one demographic = low and slow sales.
As it stands right now, there is no way to consistantly cut a long-term profit through internet gaming. That means Nintendo has to make the choice of jumping in with both feet in to the realm of free online gaming, which equals out to slow connections, thin bandwithds and headaches for main stream gamers who wouldn't know a super node from a host.
However, keeping all of that in mind, online gaming is an amazing experience that is just plain fun. If it can be made consistant, it will completely change the industry. For now, it's for nerds... with deep pockets.