Apparently everybody is in the spirit of E3, because there's been just a plethora of great gaming reading material. Especially good are these two articles from Wired.
First up is an article discussing how gaming is becoming the predominant entertainment force. Its growth rate eclipses that of both movies and music and already accounts for almost $10 billion dollars of annual revenue. It's natural that as games get more realistic on the public consumable devices (consoles like the GameCube, Playstation 2, and Xbox), that number is going to explode. There is perhaps a large segment of the public that would rather participate in the movie than just watch it.
Next up is an article that discusses the recent (last few years) explosion of massively multiplayer online games. That's been fueled partly by a growth in high speed, always-on connections (cable modems, DSL, satellite), and partly fueled by a desire to have games be more of a social event rather than time alone. This mirrors, in my feeling, the way that the Internet has moved increasingly towards technology that helps bring people together -- e-mail, instant messaging, even weblogs. However, I think the Achilles heel in current MMO games is that they have narrow focus (fantasy fans) and don't reward the casual gamer enough. To get real enjoyment out of the game, you need to commit at least 10 hours a week to playing -- the more you play, the better your character will get. Add in the fact that virtually all of these games feature killing as their central element, and they have effectively limited their scope. EverQuest is certainly extremely popular by MMO standards (around 400,000 active players), but the opportunities are so much larger than that when these games can be played on $149 consoles instead of $1500 PCs and are more suitable for the general public.
The necessary ingredients seem to be: (1) low cost hardware, (2) Internet access, (3) general public friendly games, and (4) reasonable monthly costs for online games. As much as the Xbox is currently disparaged, I think Microsoft is probably in the best position to deliver on all these things. They have online functionality built into the box, and the right online strategy. But it's a huge risk to invest in this massive infrastructure and hope the game companies will be coming along for the ride. If it all works out, though, Microsoft will suddently be vaulted from a distant third place in the console wars to shining star. [The .NET Guy]
12:10:12 PM 
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