J_Allard said:
I wouldn't expect a poster like yourself to give MS any sort of credit for bringing sociability to consoles and making it a selling point but your denial doesn't change it from being factual reality. XBL is seen as something cool, something you gotta get to connect with your friends and stay in touch and its viewed that way because of the emphasis on social features and design. And now of course Nintendo and Sony are going the same route. Not a coincidence. I'm not talking about retail games, I am talking XBLA and PSN titles. I can just rent a retail game with no demo available. I cannot rent a PSN title that has no demo. On Live I don't need to rent an XBLA to try it, every single one comes with a trial version. And now PSN is apparently going to follow suit. Another good change brought about because of Live. |
That's great about every XBLA game getting trials. But all these games also require an internet connection to work so they're unplayable during maintenance and such unfortunate events. Not to mention the server costs all these trials cost Microsoft. I guess those Gold subsrptions are getting put to SOME use. I'll give credit where credit is due though.
Thats just your opinion. I reality, XBL is a roadblock. It prevents people from playing online games or enjoying Netflix when these services are offered for free on other platforms. I'm sure Xbox Live has been very proftiable for Microsoft, but there's no way you can justify a paywall as anything but anti-consumer.
I still don't get what's so social about XBL. What am I missing here? Is there some Miiverse-type thing I don't know about?