[PuPPeT]

Ok please do not post in here till I have posted the whole thing 6 posts in all




Online console gaming. Sega saw it as the USP destined to fend off the competition when the Dreamcast arrived on the scene back in 1998. The company's Dreamarena would provide Net access to millions of gamers for the price of a local call, while the machine's 32K modem gave owners a taste of online gaming that had previously only been the enclave of the PC fraternity.

Or so the dream went. In reality the machine simply didn't do the numbers, while the 32K modem – which was actually (surprise, surprise) a 56K modem in disguise – still couldn't handle the demands placed upon it by the likes of Quake III Arena. The result? The console quickly faded in a cloud of rival brand loyalty and PS2 stole the limelight. What Dreamcast's birth/death agonies did achieve was to sow the concept of an online console in the minds of a gaming public hungry for innovation. Which wasn't such a shoddy an epitaph, after all.

From the start, then, Sony had to be seen to make promises about online connectivity to keep the faithful on side. Sega had upped the ante, but its leading competitor stacked its chips higher by attaching the magic word 'broadband' to its project. High-speed connection that would rule out plodding framerates, curb the frustration of repeatedly being kicked off servers, and bring about the advent of streamed video feeds, pay-per-play demos and episodic game releases. Another dream, but surely if anyone could make this vision of a working, global, console-based network a reality, it was Sony.

Then came the waiting. Three E3s passed, and three times SCEA president Kaz Hirai took the stage at Sony's press events pointing at the back of the PS2 or holding the US Dualband Modem aloft like some homecoming hero from a football match. And every time he did, something happened in a territory other than Europe.

Online Fantasies
In Japan, Square and its PlayOnline servers led the way with Final Fantasy XI, the most ambitious instalment of the Final Fantasy series ever. Mirroring the technology behind such PC titles as Ultimate Online and EverQuest, the Japanese developers bought in a stack of Hewlett Packard Net servers but chose not to provide a targeted broadband modem from the off. Instead Square, and Sony, relied on the popularity of the triple-A franchise to spur gamers into organising USB ethernet connections. Ultimately, it was a move that would irrevocably damage sales of the title and stall the adoption of network console gaming in Japan. When a broadband modem did finally arrive it came as an integrated part of Sony's HDD package, the cost of which effectively turned all but the truly devoted off to the idea of getting involved. To date, only around 130,000 copies of the massively multiplayer RPG have been sold in Japan with a meagre

15-30,000 gamers logging on to play daily. All that may well be set to change, though, as Sony moves its new, non-HDD specific Broadband Navigator away from online distribution via its Japanese Web site and out on to the high street.