How Microsoft Ruined fun for everybody

[wiifan75]

Slimebeast said:

I think it's right that XBox Live costs a subscription fee to play online. Not only do they provide a great service with matchmaking and other stuff on the marketplace, friends lists etc, but I always thought how can online gaming companies make money off of tpeople who keep playing online year after year (or rather, how come they accept to provide that service for free?). Like COunter Stirke, Age of Empires and STarcraft, you buy it for like $30 and can play for free for many years.

It's only logical that online gaming costs some money.

ALso, it's not like we're just filling the poclets of some greedy rich people in this case because Xbox division doesn't even make much profit.

You are right in a way but I think a one time fee rolled into the game would be a better way for this to happen.  Servers are running but don't exists for One game and One game only (I may be wrong on this so I'll admit it now :p).  If they tack on an additional $5 to the game price with the advertisement saying that online is a feature to be included with this game, then there is a way to recover the costs of the service.  So many copies of a game being released and multiplied by $5 or less is quite a bit of money to run the cost of the online service.  We pay for our connections to the service providers.  They sell games based on what it offers.  Nintendo offers games on it's online.  We buy those games and that justifies the costs.  We buy Mario Kart and play online.  The number of copies out there justify the servers to host the gaming online.  There shouldn't be a fee to connect online each time.  If there was, then who would buy the game to play online?  It wouldn't be cost effective to an average consumer.  Maybe $50 annually for online isn't much and I can agree that it isn't but when it's all taken into consideration it's just nickel and diming it's customers.  It's like going to the game store and paying 2 cents for your receipt.  Want plastic to carry that out?  That's 5 cents.  If you want the bag with handles then it's 7 cents.  Don't forget to pay the $50 annual fee that covers the cost of us having floors in the store.  They are there for you to walk on when you come in to buy your products.  If you could float then you don't need to pay that cost.  But store air is 50 cents for 30 minutes.  Enjoy your day.  

 

Seems similar to online fees to me.  I may have gone overboard with that comparison though.