Cable Goes Gaming: Can ISPs Make Money for Us?
Author: Electronic Gaming Business

In putting game content close to the vendor of the pipe, the theory goes, publishers gain access to a broader mass base of broadband customers and are able to take advantage of the massive marketing and unified billing mechanisms of cable and telephone companies. And now that many broadband providers are competing with one another in the same markets, ISPs like Comcast and RCN are partnering with game publishers, download networks, and games-on-demand (GoD) providers like Exent Technologies in order to use gaming as a key differentiator.

Broadband providers see game content as one of the most attractive ways to show off the advantages of fatter pipes. With newly upgraded download speeds of 7 mbps for premium customers, RCN can download a full version of many CD-based games in six minutes, says Elad Nafshi, director, internet and phone product management, RCN Corporation, which has 200,000 cable TV subscribers in Washington D.C., Philadelphia and other areas. It keeps a content hub at RCNInternactive.com. "That is tremendously valuable to the consumer, to be able to access a game you would pay for at retail and can download in under six minutes."

David Cole, president DFC Intelligence, says that GoD is a bit ahead of its time, because the systems still require massive up front downloads. And while existing portals like Yahoo may be effective in gathering enough eyeballs to market the services successfully, he is not sure that broadband providers have what it takes. "The ISPs do not have a good hold on their consumers, and I imagine a lot of people don't go to Comcast.net because there is not much there."