microsoft

50 million in virtual worlds by 2011?

May 20, 2007 By Dan Thornton

Sounds optimistic?

South Korea’s Cyworld has 20 million, Wor l d of Warcraft 8 million subscribers, and Habbo Hotel has 7 million. That’s 35 million for three products.

The research comes from tech research group Gartner’s.

Gartner’s describes a these virtual worlds and still mainly PC based, but also accessible by PDA’s and phones etc…

Shame, because there’s another 3-6 million people of Xbox Live to add in. There’s around 3 mill already, and Microsoft aims to top six million by the end of June. So our total is already up to 41 million, ignoring cross overs. Add in Everquest, Lineage, and a few of the others, and I’d say 50 million is probably a target for the end of 2008, rather than 2011.

How about 100 million by 2011? I’d be pretty safe to say China and South Korea will be the largest populations. And, speaking from experience, I’d rather move house virtually than in real life…

Customer retention: Part 2

May 7, 2007 By Dan Thornton

Well, Facebook has now deleted one of my accounts. Annoyingly, I can’t access the email account I registered with until tomorrow, to find out if they actually explained anything.

Thinking about customer retention, I was looking at Xbox Live last night, and realised that now, only game demos appear to be freely downloadable, and everything else from videos to pictures and extra content for games is costing Live Points, and therefore, cash.

I can understand why it’s used to drive revenue, but the implications aren’t so good for happy customers, and using Xbox Live as a promotional tool. Whereas I would download the occasional video etc just because it was free and might be interesting, I’m not going to spend even 50p on something I can’t sample beforehand.

And while I can understand why Microsoft don’t necessarily want to keep old games vibrant, when customers could be shelling out £40 for something new, it also makes me less inclined to buy a new game and face paying £5 or £6 for new content, when I could buy an old game for £10 and not bother with downloads…

Microsoft launches Live gaming convergence

March 15, 2007 By Dan Thornton

Microsoft has set a date for the long-awaited connection between the six million console games on Xbox Live, and PC gamers running Windows.

Windows LIVE launches on May 8 with the Vista version of Halo 2, followed by Shadowrun in June and Uno later in 2007.

It’s a long expected move to boost both the online service on consoles, the online service on PC, and the promotion of Microsoft products around the home.

It’s already possible to access your Friends list and Message lists for your console, via your PC and www.xbox.com, but now you can actually play with the same friends whether you’re on a console or PC, as well as the community gaining a large number of gamers.

Hopefully some steps have been taken to balance the advantages of the PC’s keyboard/mouse combination over using a console joypad…but I’m not holding my breath for that one!

But it’s a really good and sensible move overall, and has made me reconsider getting a new PC for gaming. Having a unified system which has worked so well on consoles suggests PC gaming will become a lot easier to set-up and organise. Hopefully it will also lead to a wider range of PC strategy-type titles on the Xbox 360.

It’s also a major shot at the likes of Sony, whose PS3 has been underwhelming, sales wise. Sony have long seemed reluctant to get involved in online gaming in the same way as MS, preferring to let individual games feature individual systems for online matchmaking etc.

And Sony doesn’t have a huge number of PC gamers using their operating systems and ready to jump on board.

The problem with official licences…

February 1, 2007 By Dan Thornton

After my criticism of Sony in the past, I thought it only fair to mention the following irony.

The forthcoming UEFA Champions League football (soccer) game for the Xbox 360 will have PS3 advertising. And this is despite the fact it’s not even coming out on the PS3. The reason being that Sony is one of the sponsorship partners of the competition. So where ever the UEFA Champions League appears, so will Sony.
Original article here.

I wouldn’t be too worried if I was Microsoft. It’s more a PR victory, considering the low rates of Return on Investment for in-game advertising, and the fact most people seeing the ad will already possess a 360 console.

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