David Perry posits 70 Million player massive game

I like his enthusiasm, but who is he kidding? Blizzard has done made an evolutionary leep in MMO's but their growing pains have been well documented even at 10 million subscribers. For anyone to hit 70 million they need a solid game that excels far beyond what others are doing but they also need the infrastructure that can run it and do so at a high performance level and with reliability. Blizzard has done well but a lot of hiccups are overlooked by some very hardcore players. I seriously doubt more casual fans would be willing to wait an hour in a queue or put up with bad latency.

With all due respect this guy sounds like a web 1.0 prognosticator who is trying to hype the MMO scene. Sorry man, but growth is already there and the headaches they are feeling aren't imagined. Real issues need to be worked out and when that's done the people who worked those issues out won't be releasing a free game. Just like anything that is truly worthwhile on the 'net these days it's either pony up some cash or look towards a "free to play" offering that plays just like it sounds.

About the only thing he got right was the idea that a truly mainstream hit will be just that: mainstream. I guess something like Second Life but without all the freaky furry sex and faux child porn.

It would have to go beyond the game. It would have to be like WoW and WAR inside of SL.

Umm, I am not intending to flame or anything of the like but the statement of “Blizzard has done made an evolutionary leap” is way off the mark. WoW is very typical of MMORPGs that are, in some cases, up to 2 years older than it.

I do think this bloke is right in his over all statement. If you think of MMORPGs out right now in terms of movie genres all of them are very niche... all except environments like Maple Story, Hobo Hotel or Club penguin. Yes, they are pretty kid and tween oriented but they are very general in their content. Internationally Hobo Hotel beats WoW by about 2 mill or so... 7 mill in Europe, about 5 mill in the U.S.

I think saying that there could ever be a 70 mill pop game environment is a bit much. A 70 mill Multi User Virtual World (MUVW) is plausible but even that is on the edge of possible right now. in 10 years the definition of MUVW and what we conceive it as may be so different that the 70 mill mark will have been hit but no one will really notice.


and for the record... as far as mainstream concepts are concerned WoW, the new golf, is the current mainstream in MMORPGs...

70 Million Gamers? I doubt that they're are that many "gamers" in the world. If you define gamers as those who would normally play video-games, like 360 or ps3 or pc games. Then you have around 40-50 million world wide. I mean, halo 3 has sold around 6 million, wow 10 million subscribers (not sure how many boxes sold), Starcraft 14 million. The possibility of getting every gamer out there to play one game is so mind boggling that it just wont happen.

For there to be a true 70 million MMO you have to go the direction of the Wii and Will Wright. Making games that everyone will want to play. Making them simple and entertaining, like Mario Party, or The Sims. Games like Bejewled are so huge because of that reason.

So, its possible that we will get a 70 million MMOG, or a MUVW, but it is highly unlikely that we will get a 70 million player MMORPG in the classic sense, because they're just aren't that many players out there.