Why so much PS Plus Hate?

[Mr Puggsly]

makingmusic476 said:

I haven't seen too much hate.  I've mostly just seen people who are excited about the service and thus have subcribed, or people that have no interest in the service and thus haven't.  I've seen much indifference, but little hate (outside of the possibility of cross game voice chat being PS Plus exclusive).

richardhutnik said:

If the Playstation camp rages against XBox Live Gold costing what it does, doesn't it make sense they rage against the Sony version of Gold to?

PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live Gold are quite dissimilar products, so I'm not sure why raging against one would equate to raging against the other.

One you're paying for online play and party chat.  The other you're paying for games, discounts, and things like Qore.  It's features vs content.

Mr Puggsly said:

JWS said:

I blame microsoft for this. If you buy their system and games, online should be free. Sony saw that microsoft was making money so they went for the money grab as well. I dont pay for gold and i wont pay for plus.

 

Ps who buys clothes for their avatar?

 

Why should it be free? Its not free to offer online play. All the bandwidth people use downloading content isn't free. Xbox Live is a great service, it saves developers money (they can offer online play without worrying about the cost on the 360), and it should make the 360 financially worth while.

In my opinion PSN Plus is just intended to just ease the transition from free to paid online play. People already paying for the service won't care if PSN Plus is required for online play because they already pay for the service. Sony fans will blindly subscribe because other people do.

What does Sony have to lose? MS charges for online play so Sony fans won't run there. The Wii is awful for online play so they won't go there. All Sony fans can hope for is they don't make the switch until PS4.

This is false.  All Xbox Live provides is a gateway for online play and storage for a player's Live ID, friends list, and achievements.

A developer must still store all other data relating to a game's online mode themselves.  Even if a game uses a P2P system for online (using a player's 360 as a host instead of a server maintained by the developer), they must still keep track of any information regarding rank, perks, leaderboards, and whatnot.

It's a myth that playing a 360 title online costs Microsoft money.   Microsoft incurs costs due to the provision of a unified and always accessible online service.  It costs them money to store a person's Live profile, achievement information, friends list, and purchase history, as well as any bandwidth costs associated with the retrieval of such information and downloading items from their store.  These costs are inherent to anybody connected to Xbox Live, whether they're actually playing a game online or not.

The actually costs for playing online are taken on by the developer, who have the option of either providing dedicated servers (like EA's sports titles) or going with a P2P system (like Gears of War), which uses your 360 and your bandwidth to host the game.

In the end Xbox Live does cost quite a penny to maintain, as does the PlayStation Network, and both companies have to cover thoses costs somehow.  Microsoft pulls in extra revenue by walling off online play behind a subscription fee and pushing microtransactions for Avatars.  Sony does this buy providing a premium content package in Plus and pushing microtransactions in Home.

Well developers rarely make much of an effort to maintaining information you mentioned. But the games are definitely using MS's servers which eliminates cost. I believe EA is the only developer that runs their own servers and they killed online play on several of their older 360 games already. Which is proof keeping those servers up cost money. Sega supports Phantasy Star Universe on the 360 only, I assume this is because they use MS's servers.

Also, I remember reading that Sony charges publishers for bandwidth... "Dubbed the "PlayStation Network Bandwidth" fee, the rate Sony charges publishers amounts to 16 cents per Gigabyte, according to MTV’s Multiplayer blog. Free content, such as game demos, only rack up charges for the first 60 days they are available, but bandwidth costs for paid downloadable content are billed to the publisher essentially forever."

All I'm saying is charging for online play not only benefited MS greatly but it also helped developers/publishers keep cost down. And considering how successful its been, Sony would be crazy not to eventually charge for online play as well. PSN Plus is a joke right now, but like I said its just helping the transition to charging for online play. Something they used to boast about offering for free. I really don't see them boasting about it anymore, I wonder why?