This Japan.internet.com piece uses a couple words I hadn’t seen before today, although I understood them right away from context. The title: ネトゲのプレイコストはオフゲより格安？
“Net [online] games” and “offline games” in easily digested katakana. And “play cost” for good measure. The folks at the National Institute for Japanese Language would go into conniptions looking at this.
ネトゲ gets more than 4 million hits, compared to 50,000 or so for オフゲ. And ATOK knew the former off the bat, while I had to fiddle around with the IME to get the second typed. It may be a new creation to differentiate what used to be just about the only kind of computer games (ゲ? no, probably not) from their hot new online counterparts.
