I might just be buying a PC this coming gen. Too much drama in the console wars.

You already pay 60$ for the game, and out of curiosity, how much of those costs actually go do developers/publishers. I feel like MS/Sony are just pocketing most of the money, if not all but thats just a guess.

Anyways, I will be going Wii U/PC next gen and this is one of the reasons. I don't play online very often but I like having the opportunity.

not as sad as Up (film)

If within the 8th gen steam or PC games don't evolve to also being paid online, then I'll agree that it's a rip off.

I'm sorry but it's $5 a month for X1 (less than $4 a month if you spend 5 minutes looking for a discount card) and a little over $4 a month for PS4. Buy one less Starbucks a month, one less pack of cigarettes a month, one less fast food trip per month etc. These are premium gaming consoles. If you can afford the console you can afford the fee to play online. People expect dedicated servers, more features, better everything for the same price as last gen and its pretty ridiculous. All you have to do is look around you and see the costs of everything are going up. WiiU has free online but lacks in all of the other extra features the PS4 and X1 offer for online gaming. Last gen cross game chat was enough to justify paying for gold. I hated playing PS3 games online because of a lack of this feature. People bring up PC but it has an extreme lack of AAA exclusives that interest me. I have a gaming PC but the online communities are so small it is laughable. BF3 and COD are basically dead.

Steam will never cost money to play online because they get a cut of every game sold on their service. If MS had a steam like setup and got a cut of every game sale they could easily drop the fee as well. In fact they should have ditched the optical drive and went all digital and dropped Gold fees.

the problem is that someone who just wants to PLAY online is forced to pay for unecessary crap. they should leave the lots of functions for a paid version and let people use the simple version for free.

Don't worry. Whenever Nintendo decides to build a dedicated online service like Live and PSN, you'll be sure to pay for it.

I'm a PC+WiiU+3DS gamer.
fuck paid online

every console owner company does. it's like the ONLY reason they let others release games on the console.