Netbooks are the new hot product in the computer hardware industry. Over 14 million of them sold in 2008, and they are the fastest growing product in computer hardware. They tend to be cheap, they are ultra-portable, and they cannot run high end games. Does this mean they are not a viable gaming platform? Heck no. What it means is MUDs and web based games have ANOTHER platform ripe for customer aquisition. The quest is whether MUDs will fail yet again to jump on such an opportunity. The web game companies out there are pretty shrewd, so I have no doubt they will seize the day.

If you are unfamiliar with Netbooks, then I recommend you read an article I wrote recently that gives you some of the basics: Netbooks vs. Laptops. That article does not go into the potential effects on the gaming industry, however. That’s what this blog post is for.

What Opportunities Do Netbooks Open Up for Gaming?

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Flagship Studios is in its final death throes, and the post mortems and blame games are in full force. Recently some major players in the utter failure that is Hellgate: London finally spoke out. Of course, the interviews and statements were full of the usual weak excuses: players were not patient enough with us, evil internet people unfairly slammed the game, we were misunderstood, blah blah blah. The Electronic Arts mouthpiece was specially bad since he completely ignored the main reason the game failed: its completely idiotic subscription model.

First we have the words of EA’s David Demartini:

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