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OCTOBER 18, 2002 CLICKS & MISSES By Cliff Edwards Yahoo! Gets Its Game On Though the portal's new high-speed game service runs well -- hidden charges are irksome, and most titles are too old
At the time, such entertainment was like a dirty little secret, since computers were supposed to be used for studious pursuits. Only nerds spent hours at a time wallowing in fantasies of spaceships zooming off to distant planets or traveling back in time. Today, no one makes any bones about games being big business. Sales of game consoles like Sony's Playstation 2, Nintendo's GameCube, and Microsoft's Xbox and titles such as Halo last year surpassed the movie industry's total box-office take. But while consoles for playing games on TV have boomed, PC games have fallen behind in the glamour race. Even with the popularity of online "virtual world" PC games such as Sony's Everquest, the big buzz recently has been around Web play for console games, with Xbox and GameCube arriving wired for network play. FINDING THE FORMULA. Now, as more homes move from pokey dial-up connections to high-speed Internet access, companies are salivating over the potential for new revenue that would come from allowing people to download PC-based games and meet in virtual arcades without ever leaving their homes. They even think people will pay for the privilege. Hence Yahoo!'s late-September launch of Yahoo Games on Demand, a section of the portal featuring 46 games you can play over the Net, including a few multiplayer games that could, in theory, let me arrange a geek's reunion with the Castle Wolfenstein crew without having to go back to high school. Lots of money is on the table. Market researcher IDC predicts that U.S. revenue alone from online gaming will rise from $210 million in 2001 to $1.8 billion in 2005, including both PC and console games. In Yahoo's case, games are a critical part of CEO Terry Semel's plan to wean the company from depending so much on Net advertising. The trick is figuring out the right formula to get a piece of all that action. Yahoo's Games on Demand channel is a fun, easy-to-use first effort, with games that surprisingly held my attention for hours at a time. The service falls short, however, in providing the breadth of hot new releases needed to attract the hard-core gaming audience. GOTTA HAVE A WALLET. The site itself initially appears quite user-friendly. Users must create a Yahoo username and password before signing on to the Games on Demand section. Then you can browse the list of games and read the user manuals before downloading a selection. From there, however, it gets a bit more complicated. At first, I applauded Yahoo's pricing scheme. It offers users the choice of signing up for 30 days of unlimited play of 5, 5, or 10 titles. With pricing starting at $9.95 a month and rising to $14.95 a month, that seemed reasonable to me. A big quibble: I had to set up a Yahoo Wallet account, which meant providing personal information that Yahoo keeps on record. Another gimmick I disliked is the portal's decision to force the user to take the initiative to cancel the subscription by the end of the initial 30 days or be charged for another 30-day period. To Yahoo's credit, however, it includes a clock on your downloaded games that lets you know how many days have gone by as a reminder of the time issue. LAST YEAR'S HITS. The pricing scheme isn't exactly clear, though. When I went to choose the titles I wanted to play as part of my three-game package, I discovered recently released games have an added charge. For instance, Zapper isn't included in the base price. Playing it will cost you $3 more -- for only three days of access. And playing Star Trek Armada II, the next newest game, released in November, 2001, will set you back an extra $4.95 for three days of play. Actually, most of the titles are pretty aged in the fast-moving world of computer gaming. Games such as Civilization III and Star Trek Voyager Elite Force were top CD-ROM titles in 2000-01. I felt cheated that two of the hottest games were excluded unless I wanted to cough up some more dough -- and that I wasn't adequately warned before I signed up for the base package. A Yahoo representative, responding to an e-mail questioning this decision, passed the buck. Apparently, publishers decide whether to include a hot game in Yahoo's basic package or to try to make more dough with à la carte pricing. Yahoo says it could take up to six months for one of these "held back" new releases to be available as part of a base package. TARGET PRACTICE. The good news: Playing the games is a smooth experience on a fast connection. I downloaded Hasbro's Monopoly Tycoon in about 10 minutes and was good to go. After you download each game, all you have to do is log onto Yahoo's game server and click on play -- a wait of less than 20 seconds. Game play was smooth and without the annoying lock-ups that sometimes occur with CD-ROM games. The only quibble: Every time you log off, Yahoo tries to sell you the CD version of the same game. That may bring in more revenue, but it annoyed me. Why would I buy the game before my subscription expired? But overall, the user experience was far more pleasing than I expected. The scanty selection, though, could keep Games on Demand from being a major success. PC games tend toward time-consuming genres like strategy, first-person shooters, and simulations that don't appeal to casual gamers. And die-hard gamers are likely to be turned off by the lack of current titles. Only Zapper, a platform game about a cricket that hops his way through various levels to find his lost brother, is new. Others qualify for the bargain bin -- at least a year old, and many two years. I can't help but come back to my initial question about Games on Demand: Who's the target audience? Yahoo's initial offering doesn't really satisfy either casual or hard-core gamers. Unless that changes, the site could have a hard time keeping its virtual arcade buzzing.  Edwards covers gaming and other technology issues from BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | OCTOBER |
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