Xbox Live Gold is not good value, and it is holding the 360 back

[vlad321]

Jereel Hunter said:

vlad321 said:

I fully agree with you, however on the point of it stopping sales and affecting microsoft I doubt that it actually does that. Console players DO have simpler and lower expectations and as far as they know LIVE is worth every dime. I've been saying that forever now.

And you've been wrong forever now. I think it's funny that you assume people willing to pay for products when others settle for what's free means THEY have the simpler expectations. Some of us want the best, and pay for it. Some people enjoy the console experience.

I remember when I first saw LIVE come out I was intrigued, then I heard it charged for multiplayer and I honestly couldn't stop laughing my ass off. Recently my mom wanted to buy my brother a 360 and she didn't know about the LIVE fee, I told her, SHE laughed her ass off. My brother did too when I told him.

Well, good for your family. I'm glad you got a good laugh out of it. I'm sure some people laughed when it was first suggested that the earth wasn't the center of the universe, or that tiny little organisms can make you sick, too. Ignorance is bliss. You all laughed at the idea of LIVE, but there's one thing you apparently didn't know back then - consoles had NOTABLY less lag in games than PC games. Due to every Xbox having the same network adapter and hardware, consoles on the same internet connection provided a better gaming experience. You got to use a mouse and keyboard? Great. We didn't have to shoot 2 feet in front of our targets to hit them. I'll take that any day.

Now to my point, I think the problem is that people just don't know any better so they honestly don't mind bending over and taking the MS stick fully and happily. The PS3's service is quite similar (at least from a PC-player point o view) and it is free, so there must be something else. Also you forgot that yes the console also does indeed cost 100 less, but also doesn't have a BluRay player, so if you evaluate that at a measly 50 that means just buying a 360 and signing up for LIVE, you might as well have bought a PS3.

*facepalm* Yes, because clearly those are the only differences between the systems. There are a myriad advantages to the 360. Most people prefer the controller. How about the fact that it has both of this generations biggest HD exclusive franchises? How about because Xbox Live gets new features first? How about because Live gets more exclusive demos? How about because Xbox Live has a superior Netflix streaking setup? How about because Xbox Live has more of your friends playing? I could go on. In short, if you consider $4 a month to be "bending over and taking the stick," perhaps you'll feel differently when you have a real job, and view that amount for what it is - virtually nothing.

However why don't people just by PS3's? Because corporations spend millions on sociology and psychology to advertise and market and make sure all their customers are ignorant and uneducated, then they are willing to buy anything. I think that is what we're seeing here (also true with people buying crappy games non-stop, but that's a different topic).

Is that a joke? For nearly the first 2 years of the PS3's existance, it was inferior in every way to the 360. Multiplats ran and looked worse. It had less games, and PSN was a joke next to Xbox live. Actually, it was largely blind Sony fans than kept them afloat until the system became worth owning. Now it's a valid contender, but make no mistake, there were a lot of bitter PS2 fans who bought PS3s and wished they had gotten 360's. This is no longer an issue, but to even insinuate that it is MS that benefitted most from the ignorance of customers this generation... Well, that just shows your ignorance.


@Jereel
LIVE offers what Steam offers in terms of gaming with maybe a few bells and whistles and absolutely infinitely more content through my web browser. MMO games are actually games supporting THOUSANDS of player at the same time interacting, imagine a Halo where you have 200 people on a single huge map and everything done is handled by servers.

Live offers a great many bells and whistles. And yes, you can get more content through a web browser. So? I can get more content online than I can via cable, so is that robbing me too? But wait, I can get an older game for $10 that may have more content than a new game for  $60, I guess paying more is always wrong, because content is content, right?

And yes, I'm fully aware of what MMO games are capable of. But guess what? In a MMO game, what are people doing when they see 200 people? Sitting in a town, or an auction house? Raid  groups and PVP encounters (with only a VERY few exceptions) are typically much smaller affairs, with 10,25 or 40 players caps. And guess what? People generally have to use a solution like Team Speak or Ventrilo to connect with their friends. And if someone wants you to log online to play, even if you're at your computer, they need to use something like AIM to tell you to log on and play. Xbox live handles it all. MMORPGs generally have really poor voice chat integration, if it's even there at all. I guess Xbox has spoiled me on that one, but noone expects that in games on PC, players have "simpler and lower expectations."

 

@Jagged

Steam does the whole "millions of players online and installing/searching for games" already for free. Magically LIVE doesn't. Explain how.

 

Do you even realize that LIVE isn't the BEST at anything at all? If you do you are just deluding yourself.

Speaking of ignorance, I can't help but laugh at you thinking LIVE has less lag than PC games. You either know nothing or you just are one of the mos ignornat people I have seen when it comes to gaming who pretends to know something. I usually get less than 50ms lag in my games, wish there was any measure in our 360 other than bars to compare, but apparently if you go by MW2, full bars means you can have up to 200ms, talk about ignorant people on the 360s.

Also I do have a job, and I still don't see why I should take the stick and pay 4 bucks for somethign that doesn't offer anything special, also my friends play on PC and only locally do we use a console. They know better, they aren't about to bend over for MS either. Oh, they also probably have higher paying jobs than you.

Also alright the PS3 was behind, but it has caught up, why should someone pay for LIVE now?

As for MMOs, you obvioulsy haven't played them enough to understand. ALso look at Guild Wars, that one was free and it did what you wanted. As for inter-game communication, launch your games through Steam, it does inter game chat and voice. But I guess ignorant people like you wouldn't know about that so they rather bend over for other companies and pay for subpar experiences.

 

Also yes, you can indeed get an older game for 10 bucks. Another way you show your utter ignorance. There are FAR more indie games that come out on the PC than on LIVE, and yes they are all cheap and many are btter than most games that come out at full price, especially the console ones. Also required voice chat for communication is the worst idea ever. I generally turn it off in games like L4D2 because I don't want to listen to idiots when I'm having fun. But I guess 360 owners are fine with all the little retarded children yelling at them, they even count is as a plus and think it's a great thing!