Powerplay... was dat niet iets zodat je met je 56K modempje beter on-line kon gamen? Had Valve daar niet iets mee te maken? Het antwoord is: ja.

Al bijna een jaar geleden kondigden Valve en Cisco Powerplay aan en de features klonken zeer aanlokkelijk voor de gamers. Jammergenoeg moeten de ISP's en game ontwikkelaars Powerplay wel willen gebruiken voordat het ook ingevoerd kan worden en is er nog maar weinig over bekend.Stomped has learned that Valve Software's and Cisco System's PowerPlay plan to bring fast multiplayer gaming to the Internet will not begin until sometime in 2001. In a telephone interview today, Cisco's manager of product marketing Matthew Lodge told Stomped that plans to bring in a supporting internet service provider for PowerPlay fell through this year. He would not comment on which ISP they talked to nor on why the agreements were not reached. Currently, Cisco and Valve are talking with other service providers and gaming companies to provide PowerPlay support. Again, Lodge would not comment on which companies they were talking to, but did say, "You can expect some announcements in the first half of 2001".

PowerPlay was officially announced with much fanfare by Valve Software and Cisco Systems in early January as a way to create a set of standards and protocols to dramatically improve the multiplayer gaming experience on the Internet for dial-up (56k modem) users. In the initial announcement, the plan was for Cisco and Valve to team with a national ISP to provide a PowerPlay enabled dial-up service in the first quarter of 2000 with a special stand alone version of Valve's Team Fortre Cla ic game. Then, the second phase would have begun after the initial test, with PowerPlay 2.0 becoming an open industry standard that would allow any game to be enabled for PowerPlay service.

However, Lodge told Stomped today that PowerPlay will work as advertised. "The technology is the easy part," Lodge said, adding that some of the PowerPlay networking tech has turned up in the recent patches for Half-Life. The main hold-up, according to him, is trying to create a busine model which will enable the full PowerPlay service to be profitable for everyone involved. "Everybody has to make a buck," he said. Het is maar te hopen dat Powerplay echt in 2001 te gebruiken is, want als iemand iets in Januari al aankondigd en het aan het einde van het jaar nog niet in gebruik is, is dat niet echt hoopgevend.