A brief analyse of Online games industry

In order to create revenue, any games must be able to attract a large number of users. And make them spend money continously.
One difference between online games and single pc game is that, online game make privacy impossible. This is very important. For single pc game, even if the game is fantastic, if it is being cracked, privated copies are out, then the profit of the company is greatly reduced. However, for online game makers, as long as they are able to attract players their profit is promised. That is why there are more and more online game but less single pc game and even good single pc game will have online version sooner or later.
From the point of view of players, many of them prefer to play games with people especially friends, and on-line games make it possible for people far away from each other to play together. That is important as if a person play on his own it is only a matter of time before he get bored, but if he is playing with his friends they share the joy and pain, then it will be a longer time before he feel bored.
Another reason why on-line game is so popular is because a gamer can play the game repeatedly and will feel some form of freshness whenever they play with different people. Unlike normal single pc game,like the Harry Potter series, after I completed the whole game I do not want to play it again as I knew what will happen already. If on-line game can maintain such a freshness, then the on-line game provider only need to provide good servers, and they will get paid. From the gamers point of view, it is always better to buy a game which can play again and again rather than some single pc game that you do not feel like playing it the second time. In this way, the gamers feel like getting more from the on-line game than single pc game.
However, on-line game development is very competitive as everyone knows it can make money. It is very difficult for the small size firm to start the business, because if the players of a on-line game reach to a certain amount then the price of the game may greatly reduce due to the economy of scale, and with a stable amount of players, the company can have more time to improve the game quality either on graphics or gameplay experience. For gamers, if they are already in one game very unlikely they will switch to another game as they need to start all over again and will lose contact with their friend in the last game. In this sence, on-line gamers are very loyal customers. This is also the reason why the existing firm have a high advantage over the new players in the industry. That is also part of the reason why there are 8million people world wide playing World of Warcraft, and some on-line games have very few players and have to shut down.
In the future, I believe on-line game industry will still be very vibrant. First, the next generation broadband internet enables more sophiscated on-line games, there will be less delay in the transmission of data. Secondly, the video and audio of the games will be more vivid with the improvement in the hardware of the mainstream home PCs.