Curmudgeon Gamer: Speaking of unused multiplayer

27 January 2007

Speaking of unused multiplayer

I managed a cheap copy of Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast for my PSP last night. It's a completely different racing experience from Ridge Racer, but it does have infrastructure network play. Nine months after release there isnt' anyone online. I tried last night for about 15 minutes waiting for someone to show up and then again today. Now, this isn't like immediately after release (as Ken Levine was discussing), but a full nine months past Outrun's April 2006 release, so it's perhaps not completely surprising, but it is disappointing. Given the sad state of PSP software sales in 2006, there are probably only a few thousand people out there with this game and of those only a fraction probably play online. If there has to be a silver lining, it's that most (perhaps all) networked PSP games don't require a central server for ad hoc gaming, so we can avoid the dead networked game syndrome.

Ah well, if someone wants to play Outrun 2006 for the PSP online, drop me an email or comment. I'm still learning to drive this thing, though, so if you've played more than an hour you'll probably be doing far better than I.

Labels: multiplayer, online, psp, sony

--jvm at 12:02

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Comments on this post:

This does seem to speak to the unearned optimism around the Net creating replacements for legacy (read: geographically clustered) communities.

Want to play Outrun online? Find a nearby buddy and make them log in at the same time. Not unlike Daytona for Saturn, which we played a couple of time before someone's NetLink mysteriously disappeared, or like Nintendo's approach with the Game Boy.

The death of geography has been greatly wacked out.

By rufbo, at 27 January, 2007 13:10

Just found this from a May GameFAQs user review:

"There is also a lack of players right now (there's a 70/30 chance that there will be no players at any given time, and when there are, there are around 20), but I'm expecting that to change as time wears on."

So even relatively soon after the game launched and there were hardly any players online.

By jvm, at 27 January, 2007 17:28

Yeah, there are always people playing the game at the arcades. I've tried setting up my own games to see if there are people out there looking to play multiplayer and giving up because there are no games online. We should start a group where people can schedule multiplayer games, and add friends. There needs to be something to kick-start the OutRun community. It's a great game! People just aren't playing it online.

By Knux, at 05 October, 2007 20:43

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