 |  | By Julie Kukiewicz Staff Writer Monday, 3 December 2007 |
INTERNET gaming has long been the broadband industry’s favourite Next Big Thing: the technology set to change the way we live forever; just as soon as connection speeds get high enough and access wide enough.
The market is predicted to make $13 billion in 2011 and the UK is already gearing up to make virtual reality a reality.
Plusnet, for example, have recently launched a broadband package specifically with gamers in mind. According to the company about a third of their 200,000 customers are regular gamers.
Broadband Your Way Pro reduces latency and ping by putting gaming programs and VoIP (voice over IP) at the top of your broadband’s ‘to-do’ list.
Practically, this means faster, more responsive game-play and less chance of getting killed (virtually, don’t panic) while you wait for the page to load.
It will mean change, too, for those playing online through their consoles.
Gerhard Florin, EA game’s influential head of international publishing has gone on record to say that the day of the dedicated console is numbered.
With more players than ever playing through broadband, he reasons, consoles will have to be absorbed into set-top boxes.
Consumers won’t even need to know which platform they’re playing on.
Ultimately, changes like these will result in ever-increasing online worlds and billions more being pumped into the UK economy.
Sound unlikely? Not in South Korea where a staggering 43% of people have an alter-ego in a virtual world, three TV channels are dedicated to gaming and good players are as well known as sports personalities in this country.
It seems that when 90% of the population have broadband access at average speeds of 50-100 megabits/sec (compared to 4.6 megabits/sec in the UK) gaming inevitably follows.
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