Gaming leaps at MWEB

MWEB has hit a record 50 000 unique online gamers in May, an increase of 35% since June last year.

MWEB has hit a record 50 000 unique online gamers in May, an increase of 35% since June 2011, as hardcore gamers on Microsoft’s XBOX Live, PlayStation and online PC gaming platforms are increasingly choosing MWEB as their ISP.

Nathier Kasu, General Manager MWEB Digital, says MWEB gives gaming traffic the highest priority and assurance levels on its network, ensuring online gamers of low latency, without the need for a specific gaming product.

‚We believe MWEB GameZone’s growth is due to giving gamers what they really want – an excellent gameplay experience, local content and local servers,‚ says Kasu.

Desmond Kurz, MWEB’s Online Gaming Manager, says the growth echoes MyGaming’s March survey where MWEB was named as the most popular ADSL ISP among local gamers.

The ISP also hosts local content servers for two of the largest digital gaming content providers, GamersGate and Valve’s Steam. GamersGate has the largest online catalogue of games with over 4 000 titles.

This, together with MWEB’s uncapped range of products, allows gamers to download games at no extra cost. To make access to high speed Internet for game downloads and online gaming even more affordable, Kasu says MWEB dropped its 1Mbps uncapped data-only pricing to R199 per month in April, while upgrading data-only uncapped 384Kbps customers to 1Mbps at no extra cost.

MWEB GameZone manages over 160 of its own dedicated gaming servers for over 50 titles with Sniper Elite Version 2 being the latest addition. Together with its partners, this tally rises to over 500 servers on the MWEB network, with over 8 000 slots rented via MWEB’s partners GameServers.com and Multiplay.co.uk on a monthly basis.

There has also been strong growth within the Clan Sponsorship program with 16 clans receiving sponsored servers from MWEB to date.

‚Given that gamers are very community driven, we’ve looked to provide them with servers to play on as well as the opportunity to interact with us via the GameZone community website, forums, Facebook and Twitter. We’re also doing major game launches at our MCave gaming entertainment area at our offices in Cape Town, giving gamers the chance to see games as they are released.

‚By creating interactive platforms for our customers, we’re able to stay abreast of whatever their needs are as new titles are released,‚ Kurz says.

With uncapped Internet prices having fallen and MWEB’s continued investment in its network MWEB aims to maintain the year-on-year growth figure, Kurz concludes.

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