Let me start by saying that two of Sony's "big" hitters Killzone 3 and Uncharted 3 had their multiplayer released for free -with a level cap- to attract more gamers. Building a big community and keeping it going is everything. LoL knows that, Dota 2 learned that.
Multiplayer behind a paywall in not only an anti gamer policy, it's an anti game policy. Three points:
1) The PS console in general is not multiplayer centric nor is it FPS centric (games with heavy online play). Lot's of PS3 gamers have just a couple of games with multiplayer, me personally only Killzone 2 & 3, Tekken and DOA 5 out of a collection of 50 games. So they expect us (and there are alot of us) to get a subscription for a relatively small amount of games ? It doesn't make sense. I am absolutely loving what I've seen so far with Shadow Fall but that's as far as I will go with the PS4 when it comes to FPSs, certainly I am not planning to get every single online game like BF 4, CoD Ghosts, Destiny etc. I believe this is the case with many PS gamers since PS gaming is diverse in nature. Microsoft charged for online because their gamers were so much more homogenized. Take a look at Halo, Gears, CoD and BF sales. Likewise, Japanese gamers are also not that into online console gaming save for a few games.
2) Most games struggle to establish an online user base AS IT IS ! Sadly not every game has the online appeal of CoD or Halo. MMOs go free all the time, Dota 2 went free as well. Attracting gamers is everything, it's the bigger part of an online game's success. A mandatory PSN+ will make many PS games' multiplayer communities wither and die. The recent Tekken TT 2 is not looking good already community wise, not to mention Dead or alive 5 and Killzone 3 had a rather steep decline in users. Think of Japanese games like Anarchy Reigns; brilliant online brawler, already dead. Armored Core games don't stand a chance ! Oh and I just remembered MGO (that's Metal Gear Online) which died a sad lonely death, good luck to Kojima with the new one ! Sony is expecting everyone to act like a CoD gamer but not every game is CoD. You need to do the exact opposite of putting restrictions. You need to lure people in first before you start pretending that all your games have the CoD appeal to begin with.
3) PSN+ is great value I know, but that is irrelevant. Sony is trying to basically subsidize the online part of the game (access to the servers) with their PSN+ services (party chat, cloud saves etc) which are not in fact required to play a game online (they are more of a plus). Noone needs to sell me on the PSN+, I know it's great, tried it for a year but I am quite simply not interested in a forced package deal right the hell now (services + free games forced with multiplayer). I mean Ford Focus is also great value but I am quite simply not in the market. Sony said that they need the money to improve the infrastructure of the PSN and that's absolutely understandable but I don't want to and don't need to use any of the PSN services at this point. I just want to play the game I bought which gives me basic access to the game servers (or P2P). Some will insist how 5$/month is not much but as I said only if your interested in what's offered. If you're an average gamer who buys a game every month that's a 5€ raise in each game's price ! Imagine how gamers would react to game prices going from 60 to 65€ !
Long story short, I am not hating on Sony or Killzone or the PSN+ or anything of that short. Also I am absolutely buying a PS4 day one since that launch is going down in history. But as a consumer I will not support a policy that will hurt so many games without the brand recognition of CoD or BF and will force me to buy stuff I don't want. Which means I will single out those few games with heavy online components behind the PSN+, because that would be like buying an admission to a game noone promises me will have a big and vibrant community but I given the restriction of the PSN+ wall, suspect it will die an obsure and lonely death much faster than it does today.
The pc gamer inside me is telling me to calm down and play some dota 2.
tl;dr SONY Y U NO LET PPL PLA Y TEEKN ONLNE ?
