Microsoft looks to emulate desktop dominance in gaming

Stan Beer
Saturday, 15 April 2006 14:50

IT Industry - Development

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The World Cyber Games could easily be renamed the Microsoft Games judging by the amount of influence the software giant has managed to gain over the annual event for the coming three years. With a new sponsorship deal, Microsoft will extend the dominance it has held since 2003 over the games platforms in the competition until at least 2008.

Under the deal, neither Sony nor Nintendo will get a look in as console games platforms, with all games in the competition to be played on Xbox 360. And naturally Windows will be the sole platform for PC games.

Although the event reportedly expects to attract more than one million games players, who will compete for lucrative prizes, the World Cyber Games, which commences its preliminary events this month, can hardly hold claims to being a truly global games event if it continues to ignore platforms such as Nintendo and particularly Playstation.

In the relatively short space of time that Microsoft has been a player in the games market - it first launched the Xbox platform in November 2001 - the world's largest software company has managed to achieve outstanding success, leveraging off its brand recognition in the desktop space. Although far more games exist for the Playstation platforms, it has been Microsoft that has managed to make all the running in the past couple of years and it is Microsoft that has brought Xbox 360 to market, while the world still waits for the much heralded PS3.

However, the games market is not like the desktop market. Microsoft, despite its undisputed marketing clout, is not likely to be able to gain the same sort of dominance in gaming it has achieved in the desktop space through vendor lock-in. Gamers will continue to use platforms where the widest choice of games are available and, at the moment, that still happens to be Playstation, nothwithstanding the delayed release of PS3.