Why Steam is Awesome, and How You Can Make Live Free

[Squilliam]

ElGranCabeza said:

Squilliam said:

Kantor said:

Microsoft had an extremely powerful competitor in the PC online market: Steam. Nobody was going to pay for Microsoft's (inferior) GFW Live service, when they could get arguably the best online service in the world completely free of charge.

That option isn't there on 360. It's a Microsoft platform, and there are no competitors in its online market, so Microsoft can do whatever the hell it wants.

Its because Sony has failed at being a competitor in many respects in online. How many years now have people been waiting for cross game voice chat?!

Yep. XBL is the superior choice for online gaming on consoles, if Sony or Nintendo was competent enough to develop such an integrated architecture for online gaming, then people would slowly stop paying for Live. It's not just "PSN doesn't have cross game voice chat lulz" or "PSN needs cloud saving to overtake Live", Live is so integrated that you feel like you're part of the Community, and I'm not even talking about mics in every box, what I'm talking about, for example, is the XBL marketplace and Avatars are much more integrated into the Live experience than PSN Store, Avatars and Home are integrated into the PSN experience.

I have to agree that if I played online I would play on the Xbox 360. I don't believe that even as a Steam user with 30 plus games that Steam is the superior service for playing multiplayer titles. I hate online however and I still prefer Live silver for the integration of the services and overall quality of the experience. I never buy PSN games simply because I know that every time I see an interesting looking Xbox Live game I can get the demo.