14 DAY TRIAL // The consoles are not only competing when it comes to numbers of units sold and numbers of console specific games that appear. The three-way battle that is today's console market is now focusing on the community aspect and on the on-line market for games.
Sony already has the PlayStation Store and is poised to launch the PlayStation Home service in April. Home will offer each player a space in which they can create a personal avatar, and a virtual home where trophies from games can be displayed. Objects, clothes and furniture will be available from the PlayStation Store, but some objects will be obtained when certain game-related milestones are reached.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is pushing its Xbox Markeplace as the main center for content distribution for the Xbox user and is encouraging users to also have a look at the Xbox Live Arcade service. There are already games created by third party developers published on the Live Arcade, and Microsoft is promising developers to handle all the costs needed to localize the games and to rate them in the countries where the service is available.
Meanwhile, according to the Develop magazine, Nintendo is trying to outdo both competitors with the WiiWare service, due to launch on May 19 in North America. Speaking under the condition of anonymity, various third party developers have said that they plan to use the WiiWare to launch their games because it presents certain advantages, like a lower development cost. One developer noted: "The cost of making a game for WiiWare can be significantly less than that of an XBLA or PSN game, firstly because the hardware is a lot cheaper and secondly because the SDK Nintendo provides is very detailed." Nintendo is also considering paying third-party developers large royalties in an effort to attract companies to its platform.
It will be interesting to see how Sony and Microsoft plan to respond to Nintendo's WiiWare move and what all of this will mean to the average console gamer.