| Alby_da_Wolf said: Good! This makes sense. The costs that engineer talked about, though, affect also the free versions of Sony and MS networks independently from whether they offer basic online multiplayer or not. Those costs are unavoidable, for at least two reasons: First, console users expect and pretend a hassle free experience, this extends also to network connection, so all this burden falls on the providers' shoulders, that in consoles are the manufacturers themselves. Second, console manufacturers want to keep total controlon their platforms, including net access, this has a huge cost. MS model is a way to be sure the network part of the business is profitable too, other models are possible, most probably Sony model, given its big share in movie and multimedia market, allows it to replace the basic online multiplayer revenue it gives up with movies and other "classic" entertainment sales revenue. I guess my "frugal" concept of online multiplayer can work well without risking to sink companies only on PC, because it's a platform not affected by default by those special and expensive needs of both console producers and users. Valve model works too, but it's quite different too, as it has a very strong sales revenue. Successful MMOGs are furtherly different (and the annual fees of the pay ones are usually greater than XBL Gold subscription). Crappy MMOGs like FarmVille are able to profit from a small percent (but big as absolute number of users) share that pays for premium features on a huge total user base of which the vast majority plays for free, and strongly limiting costs giving each user a very small world (BTW not connected in real time with other players), relying on Facebook and other social networks, making deals with them and limiting the infrastructure costs making a lot of transactions not real time, but based on social networks messaging system (this way the whole gift sending part of the game requires them to manage some transactions per minute with each user instead of several transactions per second as it happens in real time worlds; and also the real time part about actually working on the virtual fields and farms is very slow, limiting transaction rate too). |
The instant you're on a pay to play model you get a few more options to improve the basic level of enjoyment on the platform. Firstly you can implement a moderation system with paid moderators. An unpaid system simply cannot support moderation like that because the revenue model tends towards the basic tenets of service. Anything which would improve customer enjoyment which costs money on a per player basis would be very difficult to employ on a free service.
"I think the thing that sometimes even I don't fully appreciate – and I think I have a greater appreciation for it today, having spent a lot of time up with Microsoft recently – but they invest billions of dollars in the Live platform. Billing, credit collection, things like foreign currency conversion, being able to manage point systems. All of that is extremely expensive to manage and maintain."
Bobby Kotick
It also allows a company to invest development resources into improving services for one you have True Skill:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trueskill
For second you have real time bleeping which seems to be coming soon given the fact they recently got granted the patent and other such pure research which can be funded off Live revenue.
Thirdly you get resources to develop the online system like for instance the Xbox Live party system which doesn't have an equivalent in any other online service which enables friends who play together to stay together.
Fourth you get universal services like voice chat. If you consider a server model with 7 or more people involved in a party system the costs scale exponentially, this is why Ventrillo servers cost to upkeep. Instead of it merely being a peer to peer system, each time you send a voice comment it gets recieved by a server and rebroadcast between 1 and 15 times to different parties depending on the number of people connected. The cost of this is significantly higher than a mere one to one skype conversation. This is the reason why PSN still doesn't have a party chat because Sony likely hasn't figured out how to do it on the cheap.
Err what am I saying here?
Anyway I think they get a bad rap for charging for online somewhat unfairly. You do get the typical loud internet type person who loves to complain and it does make a very good target to complain about after Obama and before whatever Apple did wrong this time. So in a concise fashion it is fair enough to not value the whole entirety of the offering or not see value in it. In the end they are offering fun in exchange for money and if a free option is a better value proposition then fair enough. However without Live to spur and encourage investment within other services and in particular the free services, free today would not have been nearly as nice without the paid Live of yesterday.
Tease.
