Kart Rider, contd.

September 16th, 2006, By Duncan Gough

The Kart Rider news bubble has died down considerably since last year, which means it’s a great time to recap. Here’s a brief link-fest of what’s been happening.

ecolocal - local news, events and discussions

Kart Rider exceeded 300,000 concurrent users. The previous record for Korea was 200,000 according to this Google cached article.

In context, EVE Online has recently broken a 25,000 concurrent users, although EVE is one big world with no sharding, so the logistics are much different, as is the appeal. However, WoW in China is at around 530,000 average concurrent users, so Kart Rider has some way to go.

If you’re not sure what Kart Rider is, here’s a couple of useful links from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazyracing_Kartrider

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Arcade

From a Casual Games perspective, though, it looks like KartRider is going to expand beyond being the foremost PC casual online game, branching out to handhelds with the iRiver G10

To put things further in perspective, Audition ‘exceeded 450 thousand concurrent connected users’.

ecolocal - local news, events and discussions

Wow. A music-based MMO, albeit with a lowest-common denominator appeal, has that many concurrent users. The best World of Warcraft figures that I could come up with were 500,000 concurrent users from last year, which makes Audtion comparable to the ‘new golf’ that is WoW.

If I’ve tweaked your interest, you can find a good guide to playing Kart Rider here:

Main instructions - http://fgames.4.forumer.com/index.php?showtopic=738
Screenshots - http://s23.photobucket.com/albums/b396/xephons/PopKart/
http://s23.photobucket.com/albums/b396/xephons/PopKart/?action=view&current=kartCH1.jpg
http://s23.photobucket.com/albums/b396/xephons/PopKart/?action=view&current=kartCH2.jpg
http://s23.photobucket.com/albums/b396/xephons/PopKart/?action=view&current=kartCH31.jpg
http://popkart.tiancity.com/homepage/guide/reg.html

More importantly, though, is the news that Sony is looking at Kart Rider and the Item Model as the business model for the future:

Harrison went on to refer to Kart Rider, a Korean game which is offered for free. Gamers are then charged for upgrades enhancements via digital download - and more than 12 million people are currently playing.

“That will be the business model for the future of games,” Harrison declared

Update: PlayNoEvil states that Kart Rider has hit 700,000 concurrent users. My word that’s big. Is it full of stars, yet?