nightsurge said:
Scoobes said:
Carl2291 said:
Hynad said:
^^^^ The apologetics I mentioned. Here they come.
To answer your question, yes, I have a mobile phone. I pay to have access to the phone network. As phones always worked. There's nowhere I can go to phone without charge. Gaming? I pay my internet to get bandwidth. This allows me to play games online, among plenty other things. No services charge me for playing multi-player online, unless it's an MMO or XBox Live.
I guess the part that said "everywhere else" didn't register...
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Oh, so you bought your phone. Yet you have to pay more to use services your phone offers. Right.
Youre paying to talk to someone, rather than going to see them. Youre paying a premium to write messages to someone, instead of telling them in person or taking the time to actually send them a letter/postcard/whatever. I mean, talking to people has always been free. Why should I have to pay a premium to talk to someone? Why should I pay per minute to talk to my friend who lives 5 minutes away?
You choose to buy a phone and you choose to pay for the extra services. Why? Because its convenient. Your friends have phones and it generally makes things quicker and easier. I think this is very similar to Live. You buy into the console knowing that if you want to use other features you have to pay extra. There are cheaper alternatives that are arguably better or worse. You go where you feel comfortable. You go where your friends are. You go where you think the services will be better.
When Millions upon Millions of people are happy paying for the service, why should they change it? You pay premium prices for premium services. Thats pretty much it. Thats life. If you dont like it or cant afford it then that cheaper option is open to you. Microsoft dont force you to buy an Xbox. You do that out of your own free will. If paying to use the online really, really bothered the consumer that much... Then the consumer would go to the competition instead.
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Your comparison doesn't really work. A mobile networks primary purpose is to connect people. Whilst the customer may tailor a certain package to their needs, every network has to charge in order to make money.
The only way your comparison would work is if all the other networks were free to talk, text and offered a range of third-party apps, yet a single network charged money on a contract to access slightly more apps but essentially a very similar services overall.
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You actually just validated his comparison. "Every network has to charge in order to make money." Guess what. Xbox Live, PSN, Steam, etc are networks, networks and services. Steam doesn't charge because they make all their money selling games. PSN charges with PS+ because they realized they lost way too much money with a completely free service. Xbox Live charges because they know you need the income and can use that to make the best services/network available.
His comparison works because there are extremely cheap or even free alternatives to using a phone/cell phone network. :)
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No, the difference is that the core of PSN, Steam, Battle.net etc. are all still free to the user; MS' rivals find alternative revenue streams instead of forcing users to pay for the most basic feature. There are plenty of viable business models that don't block out the basic feature of playing games online behind a subscription fee. In fact, in the wider gaming industry we're actually seeing a push towards F2P products which all use alternative business models to generate revenue.
The mobile phone comparison doesn't work because at present, the only viable business models are the phone contract or pay as you go. What alternatives are there that are cheaper and/or free?
