Console: Oh, Brave New World

Console: Oh, Brave New World!

Analysts have been predicting for years that millions of gamers would be playing online via game consoles. All throughout the 1990s, the likes of Jupiter Media Metrix, Datamonitor, and Forrester Research made wild guesses of anywhere from 12 million to 30 million online console gamers by 2001. Obviously, that did not happen.

Not having learned their lessons from the mid-1990s, the analysts' predictions on this have just kept getting wilder. For example, Datamonitor predicted in November 1999 that 45 million console gamers would be playing games via the Internet by 2004, compared to 28 million PC online gamers. Datamonitor also estimated a total of 165 million consoles sold worldwide by 2006, but failed to make clear whether that number was all boxes sold in years past or just next -generation consoles. Other estimates are of a similar vein, and they haven't become any more realistic in 2002.

This kind of inflated guesswork is good for selling reports at $2,500 a copy to people who want to convince the guys with checkbooks to cut loose, but it has little to do with reality.

Our take on this: These guys are smoking crack, and damned pure crack at that. The good news: There is no expectation in the console of free gaming, as there is on the Internet in general and "casual" game sites such as Pogo in particular. As Jupiter analyst Billy Pidgeon said in a recent news article, "It's going to be easier to make money there because in the PC space, there are all these people giving away stuff. People don't have those expectations on the console side. I think Sony and Microsoft are going to structure the online services so that there's going to be a service charge that includes some basic content and a real push to upgrade to premium services." ^[1]

^[1] See "Online Game Makers Seek Key to Profits" by David Becker, January 25, 2002 (URL: http://news.com.com/2100-1040-823258.html).

The obvious question here is whether the Internet gaming experience will be good enough to promote online console gameplay. It is an open question at this point whether the synergetic effect of combining console games with the Internet will be a net positive for the console market, neutral, or worse . In the next sections, we'll try to give you an understanding of the main factors that are involved: the Internet backbone, game design, and some peculiarities of console games.

NOTE

For purposes of this discussion, we are assuming that most online gaming for consoles is going to be a pay-for-play proposition in some form or another, such as paying for the overall network connection service. Considering recent actions and comments from console company execs, such as Square announcing that Final Fantasy XI Online will cost 1500 yen ($15 US) a month when launched, this is probably going to be the case for most online console gaming. Offering free online play is a totally separate market; it may sell some extra SKUs, but you have to be a really good developer to get away with it. To date, only Blizzard has had noteworthy success with it in the PC market.

Reaction Times and Latency

From issuing a command on the controller to seeing the reaction on the screen, console gamers are used to experiencing consistent split-second reaction times. By split-second, we're talking on the close order of 60 milliseconds . Loosely translated, that comes out to less than one-tenth of a second, or in lay terms, "really damned fast." That's why they are called "twitch" games.

The Internet is a bad bet for online versions of twitch games because the Internet can be about as split-second and consistent as your average presidential candidate. Estimates of average Internet latency ”the time it takes the average piece of data to go from point A to point B ”vary from 125 milliseconds to over 500 milliseconds. Worse yet, the latency is not consistent. It is not unusual to have a data packet stall for several seconds during a trip, giving rise to the web's cynical nickname: the World Wide Wait. Can you imagine trying to duel another human in the average boxing or martial-arts arena game and having to wait a second or so for a punch or kick to update on the screen?

Okay, so the Internet has a high vacuum index now, but how about in the future? Pundits and experts are telling us that broadband will solve these critical issues for us "real soon now." Without going into another rant that questions their sanity , they are wrong. Latency rates and inconsistency are getting worse, no matter how backbone providers fudge the figures to show "improvements." Broadband makes the problem worse, not better; each new broadband customer represents an escalating demand for ever more data to flow over increasingly clogged lines. We just can't lay fiber fast enough ”only about 12.5% of what we need each year just to stay even. It's going to be this way for a long time, maybe 10 years or more.

What does it all mean? With inconsistent latency being a critical issue, publishers are going to have a hard time charging for online console games that are optimized for split-second reactions . This means they'll probably end up giving away online play for free for most games, just as Mpath, Pogo, TEN, and The Zone had to for the PC twitch games.

Microsoft may have solved some of these problems by signing an agreement with Level 3, a large broadband access provider, to provide a closed loop network for the Xbox Live service and by requiring broadband connections for any Xbox Live subscribers. This will have the effect of reducing much of the latency that dial-up users see; once a subscriber enters the Level 3 network, much latency is eliminated. At the time of this writing in December 2003, with Xbox Live less than a month from launch, the results look good. The real test will come as more players sign on to the service and more bandwidth is in use.

Design and Controllers

Console controllers mandate that these games be designed with two- to four-player games in mind. The biggest hits in the online world right now are the 8- to 32-player retail hybrids, such as Quake III , Tribes , and Unreal Tournament , and the MMP PW games, such as EverQuest ( EQ ) and Ultimate Online ( UO ) . The 2- to 4-player games ”and most 8- to 32-player games, for that matter ”just don't draw a long- term audience.

This would seem to argue that you'd want to give away two- to four-player online gaming for free as a loss leader in hopes of selling some extra units, unless you can offer some other benefits and perks that make paying a monthly fee worthwhile. The only benefit known to be worth anything to an online gamer is some persistence of the character, like racking up permanent win/loss scores and gaining power and attributes. That's where the game design comes in and why most online console games are going to fail hideously in a pay-for-gaming environment, especially in the first two or three years of widespread online console availability.

Console developers will have to design with the Internet's less-than -wonderful latency in mind, something they've never had to do before and that is completely antithetical to their industry. They will no longer be able to write game design documents using a template that starts with something like the following line: "This is a twitch combat/ sports/fantasy battle/arena duel/whatever style of game ( please pick only one; we don't multiplex here) that will appeal to the male teen market." We suspect that the only change to that template at some companies will be to delete the word "twitch," which pretty much guarantees some spectacular and expensive failures.

Remember: Console games and online games are not only games that are played on different platforms, but they are also different markets with different needs. Unless the console publishers understand up-front that more is required than just porting video console games to an online platform, they are in for a rough ride and we're going to see some online console games that would appeal only to the devil 's ugly sister. Online gamers expect a wider, deeper, and longer experience for their money and are quite vocal when they feel they aren't getting it. Developing a game is only the first part of the puzzle; most of the work happens after the game is shipped.

Again, Microsoft is going a slightly different route by requiring all Xbox Live console games to have voice chat capability built into the game, and by adding a microphone and headset to the Xbox Live retail unit. So far, this has proven to be a big hit with the players; it frees up their hands to control the game, instead of having to type to "talk" to the other players.

Naturally, there have already been problems with " grief " players spewing profanities just to get a reaction, and players are already starting to wonder out loud how to protect the younger set from verbal predators. There have also been complaints about the low quality of the voice filters, which are designed to allow people to disguise their voices during the in-game chatting. Overall, however, these are problems that are likely to be solved over time; it looks like voice chat for console online gaming is here to stay.