Online now cited as driving games sales growth

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Fri Nov 07, 2003 8:34 pm

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2003/1 ... er=newscom
 
 Brief summary. MS saw 69% increase in games sales in Sept. compared to 09/02. They attributed the increase to the popularity of online games in their software selection.
 
 The author contends that Sony is also looking to boost sales growth with more online content. Or just outright increase revenues by charging for online play.
 
 In a way, SOCOM II is charging for online play by charging $50 instead of $40 for the usual SCEA game. But hosting thousands of games, each of which can have up to 16-players, have real costs.
 
 Not the same as peer-to-peer or one-on-one EA games.
 
 The article ends by noting that it may be 2 years before the next generation is introduced so the games companies (except Nintendo) may push online to cover the gap while new hardware is being designed.
 
 Of course, there will be new hardware next year, in the form of the PSP. And some rumors that MS may introduce Xbox2 in 2004 as well. [ This message was edited by: wco81 on 07-11-2003 16:35 ]

pk500 · Post by **pk500** » Fri Nov 07, 2003 8:38 pm

WCO:
 
 If I remember correctly, weren´t you the one who said either here or at SR that online gaming only affected a very small segment of the gaming population and wouldn´t affect game sales that much? <IMG SRC="images/forum/icons/icon_smile.gif">
 
 Just teasing, but I think it´s true! <IMG SRC="images/forum/icons/icon_wink.gif">
 
 Take care,
 PK

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Fri Nov 07, 2003 10:23 pm

See I don´t think online is affecting overall sales much, despite what the story says. If publishers believe it and produce more online games, that´s fine with me.
 
 But I´m interested to know which XBL games in Sept. led to the claimed increase in sales. I saw an NPD report for Sept. and ESPN NFL did about 100k but Fever absolutely bombed, doing less than half that and about 70k combined for August and Sept.
 
 Plus most of the online games are played singleplayer. Madden gets 6,000 people playing online regularly but that´s a fraction of the millions it´s sold already.
 
 A game like SOCOM has a much higher "attach rate" for the ratio of gamers online to total number of gamers who buy the game.
 
 But most other online games have strong singleplayer modes and those are the modes that people use more than online.