Desktops, laptops, cell phones, work, work, work. Doesn't anyone around here have any fun? At 41, I'm not exactly a raging video-gamer. But that makes me a candidate for the $9.4 billion industry's push to lure new buyers with online gaming. Gobs of money have been spent to convince more people to pick up systems such as Microsoft's Xbox (MSFT
) or Sony's PlayStation2 (SNE
). Will new legions of the middle-aged put down their Palms and begin blasting monsters?
My verdict, in a word, eh. Online gaming has promise, but it's not fun or easy enough yet to bring out the spike-haired slacker lurking within your workaholic, family-man self. The key word here is "yet." I had lots more fun with the Xbox and PlayStation2 than I expected. The catch is, I had fun in the living room -- using the consoles offline, playing man vs. machine. When it came time to venture out into cyberspace to confront a online foe, I had to move upstairs to the home office, where my cable modem is. That's where I discovered the problem.
Online gaming is here. It's fun. But the world isn't quite ready for it yet, for three easily solved reasons. First, there aren't enough games. Xbox, which will debut its Xbox Live service Nov. 15, has eight games online. PS2 has just five. That compares to about 175 offline games for Xbox and more than 1,000 for the PS2.
TECH HANGUPS. Next, few people have configured their living quarters for the experience: You really need a high-speed Internet connection and a big-screen TV in the same room. And third, chances are your Internet service provider isn't going to help you get set up and ready to rumble. You might as well call the cable guy.
Take my experience -- please. It took me nearly three hours to try, unsuccessfully, to configure a PS2 for online gaming. Sure, I was able to haul a TV up to the office, and installing the $30 adapter the PS2 needs to go online was a snap. But then -- no connection. So I called Comcast, my ISP. Four different tech-support guys couldn't make the system work. "We don't really support that yet," the last one admitted. A few days later, a better-informed tech rep solved the problem off the top of her head. Obviously a gamer in her other life.
Once I got connected, the online element enhanced the gaming experience -- but not by a whole lot. The big difference: You can play against other people even when when your big-kid friends don't want to come play at your house. Sony's game SOCOM:US Navy SEALs let me vie against 15 people at once. Instead of trying to foil terrorists alone, I joined a team of eight SEALs, with eight opposing players donning black hats. That's where the biggest potential of online gaming lies, because you can't duplicate that teamwork in your living room. And even for one-on-one games like video football, it's nice to know you can always find a an opponent online.
WIMPY TAUNTS. Both systems also let you talk to your rivals over your Net connection, and their makers enthusiastically paint pictures of you trash-talking your remote adversaries. This is mostly hype. My teammates and rivals were a jolly lot of SEALs -- full of observations about looking for bad guys, but bereft of any wit.
Even dumber is the utility on some games that lets you click to send a programmed taunt. Imagine trash talk written by committee and wired into a game whose terms of service bar you from saying anything offensive. You get stuff like: "Who taught you how to shoot like that? Your Mom?" Even my Mom is funnier than that.
Of the two online services, Microsoft's is more refined -- and more expensive. It's $50 a year on top of any games that you buy. (The cost of PS2 online access is bundled into the software itself.) But the Xbox system knows who you are and tracks how well you play. So, when you come back for another round, it can match you against a similarly skilled (or helpless) player. That's slick. On the PS2, I wandered into several games of SOCOM that were way over my head.
NOT QUITE THERE. The smart play: Buy an Xbox, hook it up to your TV, and use it for conventional games and to play DVD movies and music CDs. (Xbox gets the edge over PS2 because it delivers both sharper picture and better sound.) Over time, you'll probably add one of those prepackaged home-theater audio systems for great sound, and maybe you'll set up a small home network to extend your Internet connection into the family room. Suddenly, you'll discover that you have a media center, that Microsoft has many more online games on the market, and that your ISP's tech-support staff understands the basics.
In short, you'll be ready to jump for online gaming when it's really ready for prime time. As a diehard video-football gamer would put it: Online gaming may be in the red zone, but it doesn't get you all the way to the goal line yet.
By Tim Mullaney in New York
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