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Sony, Microsoft go online to conquer rivals

Sony Corp and its rivals, Microsoft Corp and Nintendo Co, are betting that online competition can spur software sales as growth slows.

The new battlefront: the Internet with its prospect of thousands of players handing over a monthly subscription fee to face each other. It's a promise thus far unfulfilled and yet eagerly anticipated by Sony, the world's largest video-game maker, and rivals Microsoft and Nintendo.

The online game market may more than double to US$635 million next year from an estimated US$275 million last year, according to Themis Group, a research and consulting company. What's more, new titles such as a multiplayer game set in the "Star Wars" universe and "The Sims Online," an Internet version of a computer game that's sold about 17 million copies, may make online games more accessible to a broader audience.

"The online game market hasn't fully grown yet," said Nobuaki Murayama, who manages ?60 billion (US$490 million) at Cigna International Investment Advisors KK.

To highlight what's in store for console owners, Sony, Microsoft and game developers who make games for the hardware companies will roll out their wares this weekend at the Tokyo Game Show, highlighting a barrage of new online games either planned or in development.

The game show, to be held in the eastern Tokyo suburb of Makuhari, will showcase the works of 54 game developers and more than 330 games.

Microsoft, the maker of the Xbox console, will demonstrate its "Fishing Live Online" fishing game and the sword-and-sorcery fantasy game "True Fantasy Live Online."

Sega Corp, Japan's third-largest game developer by market value, will allow visitors to play the latest version of its "Phantasy Star Online" role-playing game for Nintendo's GameCube video-game system.

Square Co, a game developer for Sony's PlayStation2 console, will demonstrate its online adventure game "Final Fantasy XI," the latest version of its best-selling "Final Fantasy" series of games.

The biggest push for online games comes from the hardware makers who design and make the game consoles that sit in millions of living rooms around the world.

For some software developers, the timing couldn't be better.

Worldwide shipments of video-game software made by Japanese developers fell 10.5 percent last year from the previous year to ?517.4 billion), according to the Computer Entertainment Suppliers Association. While online games have been available for PC owners with the right equipment for years -- Sony's "EverQuest" PC adventure game attracts as many as 80,000 users at one time -- they are just now extending beyond the computer.

In recent months, Sony has outlined a plan to hook up 400,000 PlayStation2 owners in the US Microsoft will take its Xbox console on line with the Xbox Live service in November. Nintendo will begin selling an adapter next month to enable GameCube users to play each other at high speeds.

The potential audience for the new services is huge. Tokyo-based Sony has sold about 33 million PlayStation2 consoles since the machine's release in Japan more than two years ago. Microsoft and Nintendo have sold about 4 million each of their competing machines.

Whether console owners are willing to pay a monthly fee to face off against unseen opponents around the corner or in another country is unproven.
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