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SOCOM TV
Large online PS2 community threatens prime time TV shows.
March 04, 2004 - One of the most popular new shows on TV is not a sitcom, but SOCOM II: U.S Navy SEALs. Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. announced that the North American online PlayStation 2 community has grown to 2.6 million people. To make matters worse for the broadcast networks, a majority of the gamers were online during prime time hours.
As reported in Sony's own analysis of the online gaming community, the most popular hours for playing online in the month of February were between 5 and 11 p.m., enveloping the entire prime time slot. With 65% of these gamers being males between the ages of 18-34 playing during prime time in a sweeps month, online gaming could be a growing problem for broadcast television.
So what have all of these gamers been playing? The resounding answer is SOCOM II. The average SOCOM II online gamers spend an average of 4.2 hours a day in online games. In the first 100 days of SOCOM II being online, the game logged a total of 31.5 million player hours.
Beyond just SOCOM II, there have been 42 titles that have come out for the PS2 in the past 12 months that have online capabilities. Before this year is out, SCEA plans on doubling the library of online PS2 games.
The effect of a decrease in television viewing is already being felt in the industry. Back in September, Nielsen Media Research reported an 8% decline in the male 18 to 34 audience. Industry analysts have been speculating that online gaming is one of the root causes in this decline.
"When people go looking for their favorite entertainment, some are turning to online gaming with PlayStation 2 instead of tuning into broadcast television," said Andrew House, executive vice president, SCEA. "We believe the compelling content we offer online gamers will continue to drive the growth of our online platform, far outpacing other online gaming destinations and potentially rivaling the popularity of more traditional entertainment mediums like television." :D
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I thought some of you may find this interesting. While some of the opinions of Andrew House may be slanted due to personal intrests, the Nielsen statistic is interesting. The stats do seem to be related, but how could they prove that the 18-34 demographic was actually lost to online gaming. THE REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN! Now the "War Of The Counsels" begins. One thing that sticks out in my mind is this: S2 came out in November (to the public), the Nielsen stats are in regard to September. Not much of a relationship there. I still think the article says alot about how far gaming has come, and how open the future is. Not mentioned in this article are the practical applications for games. Military and police use similar games to train (although not widly used yet).
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