Nintendo's Uncertain future.

[Tracer]

Well, despite all of that man, console games, with big names, are going online. I imagine people are going to play (and often pay for) them. FFXI is only one. Halo 2 comes to mind.

To summarise my point, as I probably failed to make it:

Online games have been and are, in some instances, profitable. Not all of them are but then, not all games in general are profitable. Thats life. Thats my point of contention.

[Diff-chan]

Everquest is quite old now and has a loyal following that started on PC hardware that is at least 5 years old. A console is lucky to get such a long shelf life and a game like Everquest would hardly have such a long run. Just how many subscribers to Everquest are there? I'm pretty sure it's a small percentile of the total amount of PC's on the market.

There's about 300,000 subscribers (the game was quite a hit in the beginning, it got about 100k people in the first couple moneths), but that just illustrates my points and gives me another reason why Nintendo is wrong.

You dont NEED huge numbers to be successful with online gaming. 200k-400k people paying $12 a month would give you a few million to play around with every month, and this single game would bring in 30-50 million a year. That's not a bad investment at all. The biggest is Lineage, which had like 10 million subscribers or something ludicrous like that, but 99% of those people were in South Korea. That's the exception, the lone exception.

Which means that it's not necessary to aim for the sky to make money online. The money is there to be made. You just gotta jump in.

And also, if you have a console, you're gonna play games for it. If you have broadband, and you have a console, there's a good chance that you'd be interested in an online game or two. As more and more people realize this the market will grow.

[bbobb]

You completely missed my point. It's not about what is and isn't possible right now. It's about what is economically viable for the business and the consumer. Even if Intel could produce 20 ghz processors in a cost efficient way, there would still only be a very small market for them, so it's not worth the effort for them to do so at this point in time.

This bugs the hell out of me. Yes online console gaming isn't huge right now, and broadband isn't this massive market YET. But the thing is Nintendo is talking about the next generation of systems, which means the coming 4-5 years. There's a major push throughout the US to get BB to as many people as possible and I'd put good money on the odds of online console gaming being a good sized market come 2008. All it takes is one to two good games to get people interested and BOOM. Just like what happened after Ultima Online came out. If Nintendo ignores this market while folks like Nintendo and Sony embrace it their going to have a hard time getting back into the game.

[gamevet]

There's about 300,000 subscribers (the game was quite a hit in the beginning, it got about 100k people in the first couple moneths), but that just illustrates my points and gives me another reason why Nintendo is wrong.

You dont NEED huge numbers to be successful with online gaming. 200k-400k people paying $12 a month would give you a few million to play around with every month, and this single game would bring in 30-50 million a year. That's not a bad investment at all. The biggest is Lineage, which had like 10 million subscribers or something ludicrous like that, but 99% of those people were in South Korea. That's the exception, the lone exception.

Which means that it's not necessary to aim for the sky to make money online. The money is there to be made. You just gotta jump in.

And also, if you have a console, you're gonna play games for it. If you have broadband, and you have a console, there's a good chance that you'd be interested in an online game or two. As more and more people realize this the market will grow.

Yes the money is there, but it's really more of a gamble, than gauranteed success. You show that EQ has a current subsriber userbase of around 300K. Compared to all the PC out there, that number is way below 1% of all PC users.


If a dedicated online PC can only pull about 300K in users for one game, what are the chances of a console game getting anywhere near those numbers. The most succesful console online game has been PSO and only when it was free (650,000 registered online players). I'm sure Madden may have passed that number, but when you start charging for service, the interest drops immensly. How well did PSO Ver. 2 do?


Xbox live is a great idea, but the developers are'nt seeing anything in return. EA fought Live as well, because it did'nt benefit them. MS has seemed to work out a deal with them, but right now it's a wait and see on that one.

[AaronChance]

Gamevet, it may surprise you, but people use their PCs for things other than games... in fact most of them do. Saying that EQ pulls in less than one percent of users is like saying Lord of the Rings was a failure in the box office because less than one percent of all humanity saw it.

In this situation, pure numbers seem a little more relavant, especially when you consider the monthly fees (= monthly profits) that some online games have and offline games do not.

[gamevet]

Gamevet, it may surprise you, but people use their PCs for things other than games... in fact most of them do. Saying that EQ pulls in less than one percent of users is like saying Lord of the Rings was a failure in the box office because less than one percent of all humanity saw it.

In this situation, pure numbers seem a little more relavant, especially when you consider the monthly fees (= monthly profits) that some online games have and offline games do not.

That is true, but I'm not even including office PC's in the mix or home offices. I'm looking at it with consideration to the fact that just about everyone that has online service, is using it with thier PC first and the console second.

I'm not trying to say that console online gaming is a bad idea. I'm looking at it as a really niche market, that will take quite a while to become a more mainstream product.

Nintendo not jumping into the online bandwagon, is'nt really that big of a deal. Right now it affects less than one percent of those purchasing consoles. In the future it may be a bigger deal, but currently Nintendo not going the online route, probably had little to no effect in overall sales of the Gamecube console. Just looking at the overall Live userbase shows that it only gathered interest from around 750,000 players. Not a mind numbing amount, with regaurds to sales figures.

[Diff-chan]

gamevet, you COMPLETELY missed my point. EverQuest IS being played by a VERY small percentage of PC users, a nearly MINISCULE amount, but its STILL MAKING TONS OF MONEY.

As for it being a huge gamble, is it really? You spend the cash, set up a good network, and give games people want to play. Right now maybe 7.5% of Xbox users have XBL (but Im sure when you take out all the people who dont have BB, that percentage is a lot higher), but do you think that number will go up once Halo 2 comes out? You bet.

Look, basically it comes down to Nintendo not wanting to do it because they dont think they can make any money on it. Which is fine... but in the meantime they're just alienating their customers who WANT to play the games online and leaving themselves a weakness to be exploited in the future.

[gamevet]

gamevet, you COMPLETELY missed my point. EverQuest IS being played by a VERY small percentage of PC users, a nearly MINISCULE amount, but its STILL MAKING TONS OF MONEY.

As for it being a huge gamble, is it really? You spend the cash, set up a good network, and give games people want to play. Right now maybe 7.5% of Xbox users have XBL (but Im sure when you take out all the people who dont have BB, that percentage is a lot higher), but do you think that number will go up once Halo 2 comes out? You bet.

I caught your point. I also pointed out, that the game is succesful in a much larger online community, than that provided with consoles.


XBL is a success in one market. Is Europe even a large factor in those XBL numbers?

For Nintendo, everything starts with Japan. Online gaming for consoles is'nt even a factor there. Yes, the US market is a great place to start, when it comes to online gaming, but you also have to consider that a good portion of Gamecubes games, come from Japan. Would I love more online content than just PSO on the Cube, you bet. But, I'm not going to fool myself into believing that online gaming would have sold the Gamecube any more, than what Nintendo is currently doing now. I can say that they wasted far too much time and effort with the whole connectivity BS though.

[MVS]

I am sure Nintendo would much rather save its money than have your admiration and go bankrupt like Sega did.

What a bout more money? No online plan, no sale for me. I'm sure I'm not alone on this one.

[Keres]

Translation: While gamers might have tons of fun playing our titles online, since Sony and Microsoft aren't making money off of this concept, we won't let our fans enjoy online titles.

Why doesn't Sony and Microsoft send people free games on a monthly basis? They wouldn't make any money off of that either, but the fans would love it!