Month: May 2008

One of the main reasons why we like DDR, Rock Band and Wii Sports in our house is because we can play them at the same time. We play them together as a family or if we have a party. Those games never see the light of day when one of us wants to play alone.

I’ve been playing a lot of games online over the last few years and noticed an interesting pattern in my play. I want to play games in real time and with friends. Turn based games or playing alone doesn’t provide anything close to that experience.

I started playing Call of Duty only because I was able to play (or get my ass kicked) in real time with the folks at Bug Labs over the network. I wouldn’t play that game on my own. It’s just not my thing. But playing friends at the same time is so much fun.

I see it with my kids online play as well. They don’t want to play single player games. They want to play other kids on Webkinz. They are doing that more and more.

I want to discover & play more games online with my friends in real time. But I don’t want to play it with them on some walled garden though. I want to play with them on my blog, or maybe twitter, or notify my friends on AIM or Skype. I want to play super cool games across the internet in real time.

And I need the games to be as easy as fun as Rock Band or Wii Sports. I just don’t have time or interest make it to level 8 in WoW.

Maybe we can have virtual parties across the web playing real time social games next.

I wrote this post the day MSFT announced their offer to by Yahoo.

It seems like a million years ago but it wasn’t.

And now, MSFT has pulled their offer. 

I’ve been rooting for this outcome since the beginning.

But one thing I didn’t mention in my original post and subsequent posts is about the effects of improving market share by acquisition.

The best acquisitions is when a buyer can buy something they don’t have, plug it into their current system, make the entrepreneurs and customer win. And it gets even better when the entrepreneurs have a reason to stay with the buyer post deal.

That’s the best.

The worst kind is when two companies merge to improve market share. Large market share does translate into innovation or long term success. I dont’ beleve there is a correlation. I think it’s the opposite usually if anything. Consider Internet Explorer as the perfect example.

And without innovation …well you know what happens next.

If MSFT was successful in buying Yahoo, it would have been a huge disadantage for getting new products out the door at the combined company. The politics, committees, infighting woudl have been huge.

The reason Google is winning the search front is because they are singularly focused on that task, built it from the ground up and they are innovating. As a result their search product for now is the best.

But that could change in a moment. Not from two big honking companies merging. But from a brand new startup. 

That’s mostly likely where it will come from. And MSFT and Yahoo should be looking at those startups instead if anything.