This Wall Street Journal article looks at the strategy behind XBox Live and outlines the challenge in convincing anyone other than hardcore games to gather to play online. The article suggests that Microsoft may have got it wrong with their huge investment and missed the point when it comes to why many play games - to escape from social interaction, not to seek it.
WSJ.com - Microsoft Places Big Bet On Multiplayer Gaming
It's a good point to raise but what about all the soft stuff around the games? The text and audio linkups, the webcast potential. Control without defined goals can be provided more and it will be. It's just that businesses and minds creating game consoles are overly focused on the audience segment that plays the most. That doesn't mean that the rest of us, casual gamers & non-games alike, won't appropriate these kind of systems. They're expanding the framework of online entertainment and I don't think you can ever discount the degree to which this will affect people.
What happens in five years when the concept of broadband channels are mainstream and old hat? What about networked performance? What about live events that reach out and poke you? Cinema link-ups? The first time that I used XBox Live a few years ago, chatting to other players with my voice masked so that I sounded like a kid, it was obvious that the scenario spelt out in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, where networked thespians bid for online gigs, was yet another step closer.
An Xbox subscription looks far more compelling once the titles that make more than a token effort to de-emphasise interactivity outnumber the 'games'. At some point we wil look at 'interactive' and 'online' and think what quaint expressions. Computer game jiggery-pokery will mean even less than it does now to the success of a title. Trillions of polygons? Sophisticated AI? Bollocks.
We've demonstrated a primal capability to vege out in front of the box and I'm not convinced that this has been taken on board. The next paradigm shift may not come from game makers but more technically-naive linear programme makers who can lead unfamiliar audiences into a more participative space with smoke and mirrors. It will all involve game technology sure enough so a reasonable bet that Live will stay up for a while and someone will work out how to make money out of the concept..
Posted by .M. at December 31, 2005 04:03 AM | TrackBack