Online gaming, wave of the future right?

by Jake Fiveash 

Online gaming, wave of the future right? Its been around for personal computer games for quite some time now, and slowly seems to be slipping into the console market. With a personal computer, there was a keyboard and mouse setup for optimal chatting during game play; does this mean that every console is going to need a keyboard and mouse? What does this mean for gamers everywhere? Well, before I say that, lets go into what consoles are going to support online gaming.

From the boys at Nintendo we have Gamecube, which looks appealing enough now. It comes with a modem, and a future broadband adapter is planned. But again, I ask the question; will Nintendo have enough good games to play online? At the moment many would say yes, Nintendo has had massive showings at all the latest gaming conventions. So they have a solid first generation lineup, that has been established. But as many of us have seen with the Dreamcast and Playstation 2, it takes a long time for a company to establish an online gaming base with its consumers. It took Sega two years to get Seganet going strong. So unless Nintendo straighten up their marketing strategy, and start making some good games after the second year of a console, they aren’t going to go far.

Now take a look at Sony. They don’t have a large history people, they had great success with one console, and as we have seen, the marketing strategy can change. Look at Nintendo, with the Super Nintendo they did great, dominated the market, then they came out with Nintendo 64, it didn’t bomb, but it wasn’t the greatest console on the market. So what should we expect from Sony? Well, hopefully another dominating console, lots of third party support, and a slew of good games. But, have you noticed the little things, the fact that they really screwed up with shipping, and that many of the things that will make Playstation 2 great are going to cost consumers a ton of money to get. I’m a fan of Sony, but right now I’d have to say that they might be going down this time around.

Next on the list would be Sega. Great Games, great memories, we all know Sega has ducked out of the console wars, but their Seganet is still up. Seganet is doing great, with the release of online sports titles, first person shooters, and the new classic, Phantasy Star Online, Seganet is flourishing. But how long can gamers expect Sega to keep up their games and keep updating Seganet? This is a tough one, although Sega has had some bad luck in the past, they have always had a history of trying there hardest to please the consumer. Well, in my opinion, Seganet should stay up for another two years, and good games will keep coming with them. Then Sega is going to have to stop producing Dreamcast games, or it will just start hurting them. Last but not least is the Xbox. I’ve heard it from all of you. "Xbox is going to bomb, Microsoft doesn’t know anything about making consoles, and it won’t do well at all!" Well, I hear you bumping, but you aren’t saying much. Look at these facts, Microsoft has spent the past two years asking gamers all around the country what they like and dislike about their current console. This in turn means that, for one, Microsoft knows what you want to see in a next generation console. Two, they have the means to create that console. And three, they are local, so we will be seeing all the games first, instead of Japan getting them and us Americans having to wait for six months. But about their online play, it doesn’t look good. They have opted to go with strictly broadband, so you dial-up users aren’t going to be very happy. Well, I’m not going to spend time ranting to you about Microsoft, most of you skeptics are right, they’re new, they haven’t proved themselves in with a console yet. But, if nobody ever gave Sony a shot, would we have Playstation 2 today? In truth I don’t know what online gaming will mean for the future. But one thing’s for sure, its going to cost gamers everywhere a ton of money. Consoles are slowly turning into computers. Do we really want that? The promise of online gaming might sound great at first. But will companies make anymore good single player games after the whole market is online? Look at a recent title on Dreamcast, Phantasy Star Online. Now, the game was great for multi-player, it had everything you would want in a multi-player game. But what about those of us who wanted another great Phantasy Star story? What about the people who can’t get online? If you have these thoughts too, don’t just sit around doing nothing, write letters to your favorite gaming magazine. Write editorials for rpgamer, or even write the companies themselves. In closing, remember where gaming started, and never forget that without single player games, we wouldn’t have a gaming market.

Well, that should wrap things up for this editorial. Special thanks to Ark for giving me some idea on what I should write about. (Although I didn’t really go with his topic) That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.