| nightsurge said: 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? (1) 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? (2) 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. |
1. Do you have a link for Steam charging developers for bandwidth? The charge for developers, as far as I can tell, is simply taking royalty charges in the same way any publisher does or any console manufacturer charges royalties for having games on their system. In fact, the low cost for developers to bring a game to Steam is why there are so many Indie titles available on the service.
2. My understanding is that any game developer that uses steamworks for a title essentially gets the same service and support X-box Live provides including the matchmaking, acheivements, community features, updates/patching and DLC. In fact, the DLC issue is why EA games have an issue with Steam because they wanted to host and sell all their DLC through Origin instead of Steam. This is ignoring the cloud storage of 100mb per game they provide for saved game backups. All of this is free for developers and for users.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2008/01/30/valve_releases_steamworks_toolset_for_free/1
So the question really should be, if Valve can manage to offer similar services to X-box Live and PSN, what are MS and Sony doing wrong that they either have to charge customers to play or lose a lot of money?
