Xbox Live: No Longer the Gold Standard

[Scoobes]

NightDragon83 said:

Scoobes said:
Well, these threads always end up the same with the two camps firmly entrenched in their opposing viewpoints.

Personally, I find the idea of paying to play online, something I've been able to do for free since I got my first PC in 1996, absolutely ridiculous and abhor MS' business model with Live. For MS it seems to be working though. I suspect in the future though that MS will find the subscription fee to play online actually drives more customers away and growth will slow to the point of being detrimental (less consoles sold). The whole industry seems to be moving towards Free-2-Play, and not just for MMO based games. Eventually, MS will have to change to compete with this general trend.

You've been connecting to the internet for free for the last 15 years???

In all seriousness though, you can't compare online gaming on PCs to online gaming on consoles.  It's an apples to oranges comparison.  Online gaming on PCs started off mainly through LAN networks and private servers.  There was never a centralized network through which all online gameplay and interactions went through such as XBL or PSN.  Of course these days you have things like Steam and Origin, but it's still not the same thing.

The reason M$ started charging for XBL from the beginning was because it cost money (lots of it) to lay the groundwork for such an online network unique to one console.  It cost even more money to revamp XBL for the current gen, not to mention score exclusive agreements with other companies like ESPN and UFC for their online apps.

And it's not like M$ are the only ones to ever charge people for playing online... Sega did the same thing years earlier, initally allowing gamers to play certain games for free on Dreamcast but later requiring a subscribtion to SegaNet, and even earlier they charged a nominal fee to play compatible Saturn games online with the NetLink adapter.

Personaly I think M$ should drop the price of XBL a bit... there was no need for them to raise the price from $50/yr to $60/yr while providing no new services or benefits in return, but if they dropped it to say $30 or $40 a year I'd have no problem paying it... hell, I only pay $40/year now anyway for XBL because I always get the subscription cards or online codes on Amazon or elsewhere when they go on sale.

Funnily enough, the first game I ever played online was a Microsoft published title; Age of Empires. And personally, I think saying it's comparing apples to oranges is a bit of a cop out. The reason people are willing to pay is because they want to play online and that basic feature is the core of what I've been doing on PC for the last 15 years. All the extra features are simply that, extras. Steam and Origin are also very similar and have largely the same costs (servers) as Live does.

Anyway, I think Microsoft can find alternative revenue streams to suplement subscriptions to the point they could give casual/Silver players a few hours of free online play per month. A lot of MMOs give players free play up to a certain level (if not entirely). That may even increase subscriptions, lol.