Frenzied activity abounded Monday as far-flung corporate juggernauts - MCI, Sony, and Microsoft - took their aim at big gaming dollars and announced new online gaming ventures, or strengthened their existing services with additional features.
"With the largest and fastest Internet service it makes sense for us to explore products and services that can be used on it," said MCI spokesman Brad Burns. However, MCI's push into online gaming, the licensing of British Telecom's Wireplay, conspicuously avoids the Internet. In order to play against each other, players need to dial up Wireplay using a modem. The software to run Wireplay can be downloaded from their site, but is also bundled with several games including Duke Nukem and Warcraft.
Burns noted that avoiding the tortuous route of the Internet means a faster connection and better game responsiveness. MCI is not announcing when the service will be up in the United States, or how much it will cost, though the cost in Britain is 2 pence a minute.
The more obvious competitor, Microsoft, announced upgrades and new features, signaling deeper investment in its gaming site, which already boasts 200,000 users. "The last thing we want to say is 'game over,'" says Steve Murch, product manager of Microsoft's Online Gaming Zone. "This is not the final stage, but online gaming provides the missing component for gaming - the social component."
Microsoft's announced upgrades to its Zone service includes the use of URLs for game lobbies, letting gamers bookmark meeting places or send them to friends in email. MS also announced a deal with Hasbro games, to make games like Monopoly, Scrabble, and Risk. ZoneMessage, a new enhancement, makes use of a feature built into Windows 95 that allows users to send and pick up a "heartbeat," letting a user see, identify, and send messages to other users while that person is at a particular page.
Microsoft is stressing that the Zone is free to use. "You shouldn't have to pay a cover charge just to be part of a community, if you already paid for a CD-ROM and Net access." Murch said Microsoft is intending to fund the Zone through advertising.
The Station, Sony's new entertainment megasite, which will feature games like Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, will also be offering games based on its PlayStation console format, rebuilt to be playable on PCs. So far Sony has made only one game available, a tank combat called Battleground.
Other online gaming services reacted to the news of such big competition in a remarkably upbeat manner. "My initial feeling is that this is a positive development - it validates the space," says Greg Harper, vice president of Total Entertainment Network. "There's been some question whether this is a business that people want to get into, based on the past failures of other gaming services like INM and Genie. All these people focusing on it is evidence of the market potential that's there."
Harper raises questions about the new services' profitability for developers, however, and advocates systems that share some revenue with third party makers of games, based on how often their games are played on a service.
