Netting
New Players Video-game industry looks to score off
Internet
Kelly
Zito, Chronicle Staff writer
©2000
San Francisco Chronicle Page B1
Friday, May 12, 2000
Los Angeles -- A more optimistic
video-games industry emerged yesterday from the
shadows cast by the post-Columbine finger- pointing,
as hardware- and software-makers looked toward a new
generation of consoles to become the hub of home
entertainment in the 21st century.
While last year's Electronic
Entertainment Expo keynote speaker fielded questions
about the industry's role in the deadly Colorado high
school shooting after it was revealed that the two
teens responsible played violent video games like Doom
and Quake, the kickoff presentations at this year's
conference focused on both the promise and problems
raised by the Internet and other cutting-edge
technologies.
``Last year it seemed video games
were being blamed for everything wrong with today's
youth,'' Doug Lowenstein, president of the Interactive
Digital Software Association, a Washington, D.C.,
industry trade group, told roughly 200 attendees.
Unbowed by criticism, however, the industry ``is
stronger than ever before and refocused not on
peripheral issues but on computer and video games both
as they are and on what they are becoming.''
Although last year's $6.1 billion in
game software sales didn't surpass movie ticket sales
-- as
many had projected -- Lowenstein
said it will happen soon, as more consumers move away
from ``passive'' forms of entertainment like radio and
films and toward the ``immersive,'' ``emotional''
world of games.
Much of that will depend on the rise
of online gaming and the slew of next generation,
Internet-connected consoles scheduled to hit store
shelves during the next two years. Sony's much
anticipated PlayStation2 will premiere in the United
States in October. And both Microsoft's X-Box and
Nintendo's Dolphin machines are scheduled for a 2001
release.
The graphics improvements embodied
in those consoles -- evidenced by a video showing the
evolution from Pong, circa 1978, to today's almost
photo-realistic Final Fantasy series -- is winning
over a growing number of ``casual gamers'' who play a
couple of hours a week.
What's more, many believe those
machines' decidedly un-consolelike features --
PlayStation2 doubles as a DVD player and the X-Box
will have a hard drive -- will determine the look of
home entertainment. Consoles are becoming the fifth
box after the television, personal computer, stereo
and telephone, said Bob Pittman, president of America
Online.
And just as the ``Internet is
becoming central to everyday life, playing games is
developing into an everyday online activity,'' he
said. ``We're beginning to see numbers that say this
isn't a fad, it's a way of life.''
However, even the most enthusiastic
still hedge their bets when it comes to online gaming,
which was responsible for about $500 million in sales
last year, according to the IDSA.
``I don't think there's any question
that online games will fundamentally realign the world
of interactive entertainment in the future,''
Lowenstein said in a recent interview. ``The $64
million question now is when. Until we get some
broadband in a critical mass of homes, I think the
growth of online games will continue to be steady, but
modest.''
Online games, in which people can
play other humans -- rather than the artificial
intelligence of a software program -- over the
Internet, has long been trumpeted as the Next Big
Thing in gaming. One of the most successful online
titles is Sony's EverQuest, the role-playing adventure
game that boasts 210,000 active users who pay $10 a
month to play it.
But that's still a relatively thin
slice of the game market. Internet games will probably
only spread as far as broadband -- DSL or cable modem
-- does. And so far, the numbers don't look promising.
Technology research firm Cahners
In-Stat predicts that there will be 9 million
broadband users by end of this year in United States.
And though that number is forecast to swell to 49
million by 2003, it's still well below the number of
narrowband users.
In the meantime, companies like San
Francisco's Zupit.com are creating Web sites where
people with 56K modems can access chunks of a game
rather than spending two hours to download the whole
thing.
The other sticky issue, as with all
things Web related, is money.
EverQuest's model has worked. But
the industry will be watching the fate of more
mainstream companies like AOL and Redwood City's
Electronic Arts, which just signed a deal in which EA
will provide the content for AOL's game channel.
Hunter Luisi, product manager for
EverQuest, believes that all games will rise or fall
on their ability to tap into one simple human trait:
socializing.
``When games first came out, there
was just a single player, where you're playing with
the artificial intelligence of the game,'' he said.
``Then it was two person -- now you don't see games
without two-player mode. In the future, you won't see
a game without an online component. No matter what
kind of AI is in the game, people are smarter than
games, and people like playing against other people.''
E-mail Kelly Zito at kzito@sfgate.com.
©2000
San Francisco Chronicle Page B1
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