Almost exactly 2 years ago Vodacom made an exciting entrance into the core gaming market with the now defunct Vodacom Gaming service/web portal. There were a number of servers up and running, and Vodacom had plans to deliver gaming news and reviews via its portal.
“Vodacom is expanding its traditional cellular-based offerings into the converged communication space by offering services such as online gaming,” said Vodacom’s chief communications officer Dot Field.
We recently caught up with Vodacom’s executive head of communications, Nomsa Thusi, to discuss the current state of Vodacom’s gaming drive, after noticing that the www.vodacomgaming.co.za is no longer operational.
“We have hosted a gaming service, gaming portal and multiplayer gaming service – this has however been discontinued as we did not believe that ADSL gaming is a good fit for our business. Our current focus is mobile gaming,” said Thusi.
When asked if gaming is still a viable market to explore, Thusi said “The success of the gaming market depends on good penetration of fixed broadband services at connection speeds over 1MBS – this is currently not the case in SA so the gaming market is potentially limited.”
Thusi would not comment on any plans to get into the ADSL market, but Vodacom has concluded that its 3G offerings are suitable for gaming. “Vodacom 3G is suitable and tests have concluded that performance is more than sufficient,” said Thusi, going on to say that “Gamer bundles are being considered for mobile devices.”
Vodacom’s gaming initiative has failed, although numerous other ISPs remain in this space, and have been able to show consistent growth over time, including iGame.
“Although the major limiting factor in growth in the gaming industry is and will continue to be access to reliable infrastructure, gaming service providers such as iGame/iBurst are committed to facilitating growth in this sector by providing services and support systems to manage and maintain sustainable platforms for gaming,” said iGame’s Johnathan Smit.
Elaborating, Smit said “remarkable growth in recent years has demonstrated that the sector, albeit an emerging one locally, is to be regarded as a primary focal point for any ISP wishing to provide services in line with the needs of their subscribers.”
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