fastyxx said:
I'm not going through all that stuff point-by-point, but you really don't see the big picture. It's just so illogical. "Something was free for me for years, therefore it should always be free, no matter how much the product/world/costs/circumstances change." One of the biggest logical traps ever. I mean, you're using megaupload as an example. A pirate site. That was raided and the guy who ran it was wanted in like 50 countries, and they had to raid his compound and drag him away in cuffs and confiscate the millions he made illegally abusing international law. What a great example of fine business practices. It jsut makes my brain hurt. What it comes down to is what others have said. If you don't like it, don't buy it. They could either charge $5 more per game in licensing or $100 more console or have Live fees. But one way or another they need to cover costs or the y lose money and are out of the business of making consoles. |
There are just many different factors to something like this. It eventually became something like that when I tried to cover what I thought were important factors. You still don't explain why Microsoft can't give a free online component as part of Live and leave everything else on Gold. I used Megaupload as an example of its functionality. Wow, really why would I care what people used it for? People use Live to hack into other people's accounts and steal a ton of money, ever heard of the phishing scams? And many people also used Megaupload for legitimate reasons, same with Live. If you read the whole thing, you would see I have valid reasons on why Microsoft should enable free online to its customers. They don't need to charge for decent online gaming capabilities in order to cover the costs. I also pointed being the mindset of fully profit will not allow them to be in the mindset of innovation and sadly this is where I see Microsoft and many companies heading. Only few companies are both innovating and making real profit at the same time.
"They could either charge $5 more per game in licensing or $100 more console or have Live fees." This is what is wrong with many businesses. They can only think of adding unneccessary costs instead of real ways of moving forward. Another point I covered. If something was free to me since the beginning it should always be free is not an illogical concept at all. In fact, just recently SOPA wanted to censor the Internet and pretty much everyone was in an uproar because of it. Why? Because the Internet was ours to begin with and the government was trying to take that from us.
"If you don't like it, don't buy it." This mentality of Sony and Nintendo are one thing and Microsoft is another seems harmless on the surface. Choose one based on your preferences. However, I argued that we are already speculating Sony and Nintendo might be taking up similar policies as Microsoft. If so, this indicates to me we will see less and less innovations as they put their focus on extracting every penny from us instead. We need to make it clear to them we want innovations not petty charges on something like online gaming. If they innovate, they will more than enough be able to cover costs of their services.
