X-Box Live (Free)

[johnlucas]

windbane said:

Live isn't that special. For games that have multiplayer it offers a matchmaking service (as all online games have for years), messaging, patchs, new content downloads, and demo downloads. Lately they added movie and TV show downloads. To charge $50 a year for that seems ridiculous to me.

Seems to me it's battle.net (which also had rankings and records so that covers achievements as well) with movies/shows downloading included. For those that might not know, battle.net is the service that Blizzard supplies for Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft games. I haven't used gamespy but I believe that service was very similar as well, and also free.

FishyJoe: from what I've read lately the Live service has a lot of lag because of the lack of dedicated servers. The host has the slight advantage in this case. The PSN, while free, generally has no lag. To me, you are paying for achievements because looking at Stof's list that's the only thing that gets added besides actually being able to play games when you go from Silver to Gold.

I've never played Gears online, but from playing Resistance I can attest to the lag-free PSN. Live just seems like a ripoff no matter how you look at it. When Sony adds the trophies with Home (as well as the many other freatures while including everything Microsoft has), it would seem Live would have nothing over the PSN, and one is free. The first game with Trophies will be Lair, btw.

Wow. This was enlightening. I'll have to gain more feedback on the issue. Thanks windbane. We might not fully agree about Nintendo's importance to this industry but I appreciated your insight here on Sony's & Microsoft's online services.

John Lucas