| AngryLittleAlchemist said: You're right, it's not an argument. I'm not going to entertain a false equivalence because you think subscription services are all the same. They aren't. Nothing worth discussing about if you're just going to keep hammering home the Xbox Live comparison which doesn't even make a whole lot of sense. Humble Bundle is a subscription service, but it's successful. And if you say "that's a false equiva-" yeah , that's exactly my point... There really hasn't been a lot of subscription services based around delivering games for a low cost. The one I can think of that was a massive flop was too early technologically for it's own good, and died out because it was based on streaming rather than digital downloads. Ah, well if you just mean taking the good parts of Steam and not literally competing as a purely digital download storefront then I agree. Which is why I more or less said that ... I literally listed ONE problem with Steam. Maybe two? Talk about exaggeration...... obviously if someone is a competitor to another service they need to show which ways that service can be improved. I don't even understand how you can say I'm only focusing on the negatives of Steam when I listed original ideas on how Microsoft can make a good service. If someone makes an argument for how a competing service can be made and they just list the negatives of the existing predominate service than they aren't making an argument. That's why I didn't do that.
How did I assume that when I literally said that my preference is owning them ... ? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense. People who talk from a very one-sided perspective and make broad sweeping judgments on peoples preferences are generally in favor of the preference they are speaking about. That's why they aren't level-headed and make bad arguments, because they think everyone will want what they want. But in this case my preference isn't even renting games so obviously I wouldn't assume everyone else would want to as well... This doesn't even make sense from a logical perspective. 90% of the PC market isn't being a competitor to Valve, it's literally being the main driving force in the PC world. My point was never that Microsoft should capture 90% of the market, that doesn't make sense. I was just saying that there should be a COMPETITOR to Valve, because we really don't have one right now ... The point about the "slippery slope" for paying a few extra dollars is just illogical. How is it a "slippery slope"? You want to play the game offline, purchase it for a few dollars. How is that a "slippery slope"? It sounds like you just threw out a phrase to invalidate an idea. In general your point about Mods and DRM is a big nothing burger. Again, the comment you originally responded to was simply saying the idea would be interesting. Then, you took a hypothetical and replied to it in a purely negative perspective. So I replied from a positive one because it would be more interesting. Obviously, if I'm entertaining the idea of a positive hypothetical from Microsoft .... then a free modding community and less DRM would be a pretty good start. I'm not stupid, I don't need to "study the PC ecosystem" (do you really think it's hard to study an ecosystem with one main digital storefront and like four significantly smaller somewhat legitimate subdivisions? What's complex about the PC community ... the mods?). I'm simply saying that if I was to be an optimist, and thought that the Devil could change their ways and do something positive for the community ... the program I outlined would be a pretty good start.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Since you are making a big stink about this, let me do the work for you. My idea is too optimistic. It could happen, it's not as unrealistic as a world of nothing but peace and love. But it's pretty damn close. If you want me to be realistic, then Microsoft's DRM policies as well as Mods would make it nearly impossible for them to be a good competitor. They could do it, but that would require them to be less stubborn. And that's assuming they're even going to be making a subscription service .... |
1) You call them false, but they remain the same. You pay a sub fee, you get to play said games that come with said sub fee, that's how it works.
2) Yes, because that's how you learn from your competitor. You find what good they do and you build on top of that. if you want to do a complete 180 and not do a thing they've done, then it might work, or completely backfire and set you back even further, allowing more competitors to learn from your setback and gaining further ground, thus taking the good pages is usually the better route to take (which Steam didn't have the luxury of doing when it first launched, but MS has got years worth of data to study from).
3) It's not really an exaggeration, considering as to how you listed some bad, and didn't put in the good to balance it out.
4)You wanting to own a a game has nothing in relation to others paying a sub fee to rent their games. The rest of that paragraph is steering away from the sub fee crowd part.
5)You have other storefronts out there, but hardly any of them are trying to actually compete for the larger crowd. Steam is at the top because Valve worked on building up the storefront and client since they launched it. Being a competitor to Valve means enticing users from Steam's storefront to MS's. Just like how GoG has enticed some folk to stop using Steam and instead heading over to GoG (Quake, a user on these forums is a living example of this).
Being a competitor to Valve means being on their level, otherwise you may as well become another Origin and Uplay, where you sell your own titles and gain little of a following.
6) Because the way you talk about paying a few extra dollars entails that it can go beyond that. What's a few extra dollars more?, couldn't be much can it?. Pay a few extra dollars for this, a little bit of that etc. It doesn't have a fixed point when you say "just a few extra dollars more". Why do you think you see ads with "only 29.99", rather than "29.99, and a few extra dollars more for this and a few more for that".
7) Again, you think mods and the like are worth nowt, but that shows how little you know of the modding community on PC. You try to make it sound positive, but it's really not. I gave you the example of the Bethesda modding club and look how that turned out. Restricting mods doesn't automatically make it far superior and positive over just allowing modding in general. less mods isn't automatically better than just modding the game. No amount of spinning it is going to change the outcome of that discussion.
8) You act like you know it inside and out, more so than myself, but you seem to apply what outside lookers say when talking about the ecosystem and what goes on within it. I also never said PC gaming wasn't "complex" to understand.
You thought that the "devil" would change it's ways?. You mean after nearly 2 decades, you think it finally wants to change it's way?. Sure if you want to ignore all the history behind them and remain blindly optimistic, then yeah, they can totally do good and no wrong, but I'm looking at it with the history and actions that were taken over those years and applying a realistic outlook. You can totally turn around and "invalidate" it by calling it unrealistic, but then you're going to call taking data in and looking at a company's actions as "unrealistic".
I'm not even making a big stink out of it 
I'm just trying to point out to you that in the past, charging a fee to rent games on PC hasn't worked with MS, charging for online hasn't worked either. That's how it's been for years and the gamers on that side have been very, very vocal about it. I think it causes more of a stink to hear that not everyone shares the same ideal that you hold for MS taking another shot at charging a sub fee on PC.
9) Yeah, considering one of their games contained 5 layers of DRM, you'd think they'd support the modding scene by not using 5 layers that disrupt the modding scene right?.
You use mods all the time, but from the sounds of it, it's not worth much time to look or reflect back on in a positive light, because you suggested them to be "checked" first. I've used mods and tweaked games for years. The difference between you and me on that subject, is that I don't want mods being checked at all. Mods are mods.
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