4. Gaming and Global Markets

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Online gaming, particularly persistent-world RPGs, continues to see enormous market potential. Subscription online games earned $259 million in 2001, and that number is expected to jump to $1.7 billion this year.

Recognizing the long-term popularity of the genre, software developers and online game service providers are diving into the market with a number of buzz-worthy MMORPGs:

• This fall, Westwood Studios introduced Earth & Beyond, a 24th-century space exploration RPG that emphasizes business wheeling and dealing, diplomacy and, yes, some space combat
• Along the space quest vein, EverQuest has paired up with LucasArts to bring the ever-popular Star Wars to the online MMORPG market with Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided. The game is expected to start with on-planet exploration only, with expansion packs allowing players to go off-planet and explore the galaxy far, far away
• The Sims Online is getting significant industry attention; the MMORPG, released in late 2002, is based on Electronic Art's wildly popular Sims PC game, where players create a simulated human character (a "Sim") and work hard to "get a life": career, money, beautiful homes, love, children, pets. While in the off-line PC game, a player's Sim only interacts with computer-generated Sims, the online version will allow players to interact with other players' Sims in real-time

With new games and expansion packs for existing games introduced regularly and with broadband deployment growing, analysts are predicting a continued surge in online gaming. In the U.S., Jupiter Media Metrix projects that, by 2006, subscription revenues from online PC games will total $1.5 billion and subscription revenues for online console gaming will be about $250 million. In Europe, online gaming will take off in 2005, when 12.7 million households will have the needed technology (hardware and infrastructure) to play online games. (Incidentally, a customized version of EverQuest, with English, French and German languages, was launched in Europe in 2002.)

In Asia, online gaming has already seen enormous adoption in the consumer market. Pacific Internet of Singapore launched a paid model for online gaming in May 2002, the Pan Asia Gaming Network (paGn) and its first commercial game El Kardian, which got rave reviews among its 40,000 beta-testing players. In March 2002, Singapore saw a 33 percent increase in the number of visitors to online gaming sites compared with the same time period in 2001, according to Internet intelligence firm NetValue.

Ubi Soft Entertainment estimates that there are 13 million massively multi-player online gamers in China, including 5 million already paying regularly for online games. Sony Online Entertainment, which owns EverQuest, is teaming with Ubi Soft to introduce the MMORPG to Mainland China in early 2003.

But the largest success story for online gaming is in South Korea, which according to Wired Magazine has the highest per-capita broadband penetration in the world — slightly more than half of all households (8.5 million subscribers). South Korea is so enamored of online gaming that live competitions of the most popular online games are telecast to millions of fans, complete with slow motion replays and color commentary. It has become a national sport, spawning career gamers who compete for cash prizes. Lineage, one of the most popular games in Korea, has around 3 million subscribers — out of a population of 47 million — with about 150,000 playing simultaneously on a regular basis.