pezus said:
TheKoreanGuy said:
fastyxx said:
I have no problem paying for Live. We've been down this road in this argument a million times.
Bandwidth costs money. Offering that demo, which will be downloaded 2 million times at 5 gigs apiece costs money. And that's ONE item. It all costs them money to host and provide all this content. The fact that EVERY XBLA game has a demo to try before you buy? Costs money. Having access to all the apps, whether you only use one or you use 10, costs money. None of it is free.
Sony is completely regretting their approach. They need that revenue badly. But they didn't go that route to be the good guy. instead, like so many things in the PS3 development and launch, they completely f'ed up. In this case, they totally underestimated the importance of connected home consoles because Japan was way behind in the way they used connected gaming. It wasn't important to them. (See Nintendo.) Sony made online gaming a feature they knew they needed to have to be competitive, but launched with no PSN, no plan, no anything and have been scrambling ever since, with money flying out their door the whole time. They've been playing catch-up ever since, but if they had to do it all over again, they'd follow Live's model much more closely, though likely not exactly.
Why shouldn't the people most heavily using the product support the costs? And why shouldn't the company providing the services make some profit off it? That's the whole reason the company is in business and we have these platforms at our disposal. MS is making money in their entertainment division and they still have large and vocal percentage of their shareholders that wan them out of the console business because they are not making ENOUGH money. Imagine how badly some of Sony's investors want them out of the sector where they are flat-out hemorrhaging money.
These arguments are immature and childish. You want great new games, but you want them to be cheap if not free. You want awesome, reliable, secure service, but you want it to be free. You want more, and bigger and better and faster and more awesome but you don't want to pay for any of it. It's just a completely unsupportable, ridiculous argument.
SONY AND NINTENDO AND MICROSOFT AND DEVS AND PUBLISHERS ARE IN THE BUSINESS OF MAKING PROFITS, NOT GIVING AWAY THEIR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES FOR FREE. They don't care about you as a person, but only as a consumer. They care if you're having fun and feeling like you get value, but only so that you'll spend more money on the platform and buy the next one. That is ALL. The sooner you come to grips with that, the happier you'll be. |
Your argument is flawed. Then why does no one else on this entire planet charge to use their online services? Neither Sony, Nintendo, nor Steam follow this even though Xbox has been charging for their service from the beginning. Sure, maybe if you want extra features, charge them for that. Microsoft doesn't NEED to charge for ONLINE to make that profit. If I took FaceBook or Google for example, they make a profit without charging for any of it. Imagine the outrage that would occur if we suddenly had to pay for it. It's these double standards that irk me. Paying for Live is okay, but paying for Facebook would be stupid? If you want to say paying Microsoft for their service is justified, then you also better be prepared to argue for paying for EVERY service you use. Microsoft even puts ads on your dashboard like wtf. Microsoft is the one scrambling for money and succeeding at it too. This becomes more evident with Kinect and how they are putting all their effort into taking some of Wii's market share away from them when they PROMISED they would provide core gaming experiences on Kinect.
I don't want the best online experience possible for free. It would obviously be nice but if it truly is the best service available then it deserves to make a profit. What I want for Microsoft to do is to offer at the very least DECENT ONLINE for silver members. Microsoft could then offer a vastly superior online through gold membership. Is it that hard to allow this? Are they going to lose SO much money from this? Surely they probably considered it before, but realized they want money and a lot of people would stop paying for Live. But if consumers are not willing to upgrade to Gold when they are offered online for free, then that is not the consumer's fault; it is Microsoft's fault for not making their service more appealing. If they need to have online capabilities for only Gold members in order to make it appealing, then Live really is worthless. They are doing a disservice to their customers by not allowing them to play their games without FIRST paying microsoft. You keep saying businesses are in this to make a profit but why do you consider it "childish" to think about the interests of yourself? Truth is Sony have done a great job in bringing PSN on par with Live, but Xbox gamers are too stubborn to admit it since they are paying for theirs.
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I think I can safely say this now like a guy above
/thread
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Such a completely flawed counter post that in no way whatsoever deserving of /thread. I won't even begin to disuss why the comparison to Facebook or Google is incredibly ridiculous.
You want to know why Steam, Sony, and Nintendo don't charge for their services? Because they make the GAME DEVELOPERS front a lot of the cost of bandwidth and host the servers, while Microsoft fronts the bill for every multiplayer game on Xbox Live (except for dedicated server games, but MS will still host all the matchmaking services and trueskill). Do you have any idea how much it costs to host millions of users on an online service? It is not cheap, and most certainly not free. Why else do you think Sony all the sudden started trying to charge $50 a year for what boils down to a discount package? To make up the costs of all their bandwidth, data management, etc. Why else do you think the Playstation product division remained so negative in profits for so long even after becoming profitable on hardware? Steam doesn't even host multiplayer for anything other than Valve's own games. Everything else is the game developers themselves. And then we have the Wii which is a broken and unorganized service that is more of a hassle than a benefit when it comes to playing online.
This is why most multiplatform games have better multiplayer on Xbox Live (which is proven very easily by the majority of experiences from users that have both PSN and Xbox Live and any unbiased comparison). Because MS hosts the servers and have all the years of experience in getting the best results and they also integrate everything so well across all games. But I am getting ahead of myself by going that route.
Yes, perhaps they could offer just basic, dumbed down multiplayer for free to silver, with no voice chat, cross game chat, no friend invites/messages, or any other bonuses to Gold, but what would be the point? The best things about Xbox Live is playing with friends, talking trash or making new friends, or simply chatting with your friends regardess of what you are doing on Xbox Live via Party/Private Chat.
The fact of the matter is, these are services provided by companies that involve a very considerable cost in multiple ways. That cost has to be paid for somehow, either by the game developers, the main company providing the service, or it can be passed on to the customers using the service in return for all the value and better quality that the service provides. Personally, and I know I am very far from alone here, I don't mind paying a small fee ($35-50 a year) for services that offer a much higher level of quality and value than other alternatives.
