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Forums - Gaming - What Makes Xbox live worth it?

darkknightkryta on 18 October 2010
dahuman said:
darkknightkryta said:

Just throwing this out there, but as a PS3 fanboy and not using much of Live I will say that for what you do get in Gold is worth 60 dollars (70 now?).  Now what I'm going to talk about , I have no idea if it's available for silver or not, but the ability to download my profile to any 360 with all my games, to be able to download my saves to any 360 and keep up cloud storage, demos, videos, etc, match making, cross game catch etc, is worth the 60 dollars you spend and that alone makes it worth the money.  Now they added ESPN and other stuff (I'm not including facebook integration or anything like that cause let's be frank, use a PC or your PS3's web browser.  Hell your mobile phone would probably be better to use) and they raised the price of Live and that is worth it for the extras.  Now here's where the counter argument comes into play; game hosts.  That's the most crucial part of gold, playing games online.  You can cut all that crap out and the most important thing is playing games.  Here's the argument against Live; games have become peer to peer and you're now paying money to use your bandwidth that you're already paying for to host a game.  That to me is fail and you can't argue against that cause now Microsoft is charging you to use something that costs you money.  It's like paying for the air you breath, it's ludicrus.   Now before on the X-box all games had access to dedicated servers and it's all gone now, and I personally feel anyone paying for Live to just play games is essentially having their money stolen by Microsoft.  And that is personally why I refuse to pay for Live.  Now with that out of the way the overall service is very good, integrated well, and has a lot of features and Microsoft was ahead of the game with its cloud storage of profiles and such (Though Steam might be able to match it, though I don't use steam much to see if it works as well).  On another note: as far as I know the price is going up here in Canada and we're getting none of the features that have driven up the costs (ESPN and probably other things, though I'm sure the ESPN deal was the major cost increase).  To sum up is Live better than PSN?  Of course it is, it's quite better and is worth every penny.  But on the other hand if I only want to play games with my friends, the core of the service,  it's a huge ripoff; why?  Cause Microsoft is paying for nothing outside of their match making servers and cross game chat.  Now I put this idea foward: turn Gold into a core account charge the minimum to run cross game chat and match making servers, and add on a small price hike for a profit.  Move all that extra non-game related stuff and the extra game related stuff (cloud storage) and put that into a platinum and charge whatever the hell they want.  If I had people playing on the 360 only that I want to play with; I'll gladly pay a smaller fee for just the core service of match making and cross game chat, kinda like what Sony did (PSN regular for gaming is gaming only and free, everything else extra you don't care about is on a fee, if you want it then go right ahead and pay for it).  Now can we stop having these threads?  There's a bajillion of these in the forums already going over these points.

You can bet your ass that I'll never pay for PSN Plus, I'll bet you my entire asset on that, and that's a lot of money! fuck if I wanted Hulu, I'd use Hulu on a computer! PS3 web broswer sucks lol. P2P or dedicated servers don't bother me one bit since my connection is godly 25/25 with crazy ping, I just know when something is a god damn rip off.

I'm not paying for PSN Plus either, I don't have a need for it.  I'm just saying I'd pay for Live (Which I refuse to right now) if they just charged for the cost of running their match making servers, cross game chat, and a small profit hike (Companies have to make money) and leave all that extra crap I don't need to another service, let's say Live Platinum.  As it is right now Live is a similar service to PSN Plus (Yes Live is better that's not what I'm trying to argue), it's just that Microsoft doesn't offer a core service like Sony does which is barebones online and that's my only argument against Live.  And even though technically Live is worth the money, I feel it is a ripoff too (I'm assuming that's what you meant with that last sentence unless you mean PSN ,  I actually don't know why you brought up PSN Plus though 0.o)



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oniyide on 18 October 2010

@Reidslosdog  why does the number matter anyway, the fact is you said only Fifa games sell better on PS3 and I just showed you just how wrong you are. There are quite a few games that sell better on PS3. It doenst matter by if is a 1 million difference or 1,000 copy difference more is more.  I will agree that online is not that important to PS3 users, not to me anyway its not that PSN sucks it works fine for me. I just have to much crap to do outside of video games to devote that much time to online. So paying for features that im not going to use anyway will be asinine, but if you play MW2 or Halo or what have you for hours a day then yeah by all means pay the 60 dollar fee. I never will



dahuman on 18 October 2010
darkknightkryta said:
dahuman said:
darkknightkryta said:

Just throwing this out there, but as a PS3 fanboy and not using much of Live I will say that for what you do get in Gold is worth 60 dollars (70 now?).  Now what I'm going to talk about , I have no idea if it's available for silver or not, but the ability to download my profile to any 360 with all my games, to be able to download my saves to any 360 and keep up cloud storage, demos, videos, etc, match making, cross game catch etc, is worth the 60 dollars you spend and that alone makes it worth the money.  Now they added ESPN and other stuff (I'm not including facebook integration or anything like that cause let's be frank, use a PC or your PS3's web browser.  Hell your mobile phone would probably be better to use) and they raised the price of Live and that is worth it for the extras.  Now here's where the counter argument comes into play; game hosts.  That's the most crucial part of gold, playing games online.  You can cut all that crap out and the most important thing is playing games.  Here's the argument against Live; games have become peer to peer and you're now paying money to use your bandwidth that you're already paying for to host a game.  That to me is fail and you can't argue against that cause now Microsoft is charging you to use something that costs you money.  It's like paying for the air you breath, it's ludicrus.   Now before on the X-box all games had access to dedicated servers and it's all gone now, and I personally feel anyone paying for Live to just play games is essentially having their money stolen by Microsoft.  And that is personally why I refuse to pay for Live.  Now with that out of the way the overall service is very good, integrated well, and has a lot of features and Microsoft was ahead of the game with its cloud storage of profiles and such (Though Steam might be able to match it, though I don't use steam much to see if it works as well).  On another note: as far as I know the price is going up here in Canada and we're getting none of the features that have driven up the costs (ESPN and probably other things, though I'm sure the ESPN deal was the major cost increase).  To sum up is Live better than PSN?  Of course it is, it's quite better and is worth every penny.  But on the other hand if I only want to play games with my friends, the core of the service,  it's a huge ripoff; why?  Cause Microsoft is paying for nothing outside of their match making servers and cross game chat.  Now I put this idea foward: turn Gold into a core account charge the minimum to run cross game chat and match making servers, and add on a small price hike for a profit.  Move all that extra non-game related stuff and the extra game related stuff (cloud storage) and put that into a platinum and charge whatever the hell they want.  If I had people playing on the 360 only that I want to play with; I'll gladly pay a smaller fee for just the core service of match making and cross game chat, kinda like what Sony did (PSN regular for gaming is gaming only and free, everything else extra you don't care about is on a fee, if you want it then go right ahead and pay for it).  Now can we stop having these threads?  There's a bajillion of these in the forums already going over these points.

You can bet your ass that I'll never pay for PSN Plus, I'll bet you my entire asset on that, and that's a lot of money! fuck if I wanted Hulu, I'd use Hulu on a computer! PS3 web broswer sucks lol. P2P or dedicated servers don't bother me one bit since my connection is godly 25/25 with crazy ping, I just know when something is a god damn rip off.

I'm not paying for PSN Plus either, I don't have a need for it.  I'm just saying I'd pay for Live (Which I refuse to right now) if they just charged for the cost of running their match making servers, cross game chat, and a small profit hike (Companies have to make money) and leave all that extra crap I don't need to another service, let's say Live Platinum.  As it is right now Live is a similar service to PSN Plus (Yes Live is better that's not what I'm trying to argue), it's just that Microsoft doesn't offer a core service like Sony does which is barebones online and that's my only argument against Live.  And even though technically Live is worth the money, I feel it is a ripoff too (I'm assuming that's what you meant with that last sentence unless you mean PSN ,  I actually don't know why you brought up PSN Plus though 0.o)

because walls of text is hard to read and easy to misunderstand, but yeah we are pretty much on the same page.



darkknightkryta on 18 October 2010

You can bet your ass that I'll never pay for PSN Plus, I'll bet you my entire asset on that, and that's a lot of money! fuck if I wanted Hulu, I'd use Hulu on a computer! PS3 web broswer sucks lol. P2P or dedicated servers don't bother me one bit since my connection is godly 25/25 with crazy ping, I just know when something is a god damn rip off.

I'm not paying for PSN Plus either, I don't have a need for it.  I'm just saying I'd pay for Live (Which I refuse to right now) if they just charged for the cost of running their match making servers, cross game chat, and a small profit hike (Companies have to make money) and leave all that extra crap I don't need to another service, let's say Live Platinum.  As it is right now Live is a similar service to PSN Plus (Yes Live is better that's not what I'm trying to argue), it's just that Microsoft doesn't offer a core service like Sony does which is barebones online and that's my only argument against Live.  And even though technically Live is worth the money, I feel it is a ripoff too (I'm assuming that's what you meant with that last sentence unless you mean PSN ,  I actually don't know why you brought up PSN Plus though 0.o)

because walls of text is hard to read and easy to misunderstand, but yeah we are pretty much on the same page.

Yeah I realized after the fact that I could have bullet formed everything and it would have been a lot more legible.  Yes we are on the same page.



MARCUSDJACKSON on 18 October 2010
Ajescent said:
d21lewis said:

I would tell you but if the PS3 owners knew the secret, they'd be too jealous.  It's best left unsaid.


fact


not a fact. its all about the friends, comunity, and experiances u get from all that and more! 



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Squilliam on 18 October 2010
Icyedge said:
Squilliam said:
SpartenOmega117 said:
Squilliam said:

Maybe if Sony actually invested in improving their features you would have an actual good reason to ask that question. However firmware upgrades and PSN come out of Japan and Japan doesn't get the importance of online gaming. It wouldn't hold your breath.


give me some examples of features that need improving. i know psn definately needs cross game chat but what else. what makes xbox live so much more worth it?
  • Party system
  • Better matchmaking, it uses Truskill
  • Consistancy and reliability outside of the main games especially
  • Game demos
  • Less lag especially when playing with people overseas.
  • Patches/updates take 2 seconds vs up to 1/4 hour
  • Cross game chat

2 points have problem:

Nowadays, they get the same game demos.

Patches/update download size and installation time isnt related to the online network.

And about those:

Are you sure about more consistency/reliability outside of the main game and less lag when playing with people overseas? By sure I mean having some kind of hard demonstration or expertise on the matter.

Party system/matchmaking isnt related with games?

Patches which take 15s vs up to 15M are a significant difference because they only happen when you're online. Hence their being relevent to the online experience.

Party Systems are related to games, it makes playing with friends about 5* easier. If you never play with friends then you wouldn't really care.

Consistancy/reliability on games which fall outside of first party Sony titles. The typical lessor multiplats. Games like Borderlands for instance. As for latency overseas, its just my personal experience. I can play with people in the UK on Live but not PSN.





Tease.

d21lewis on 19 October 2010

*reads thread*

Man, I got quoted a lot!  All 8 can do is quote an old song:  "What a fool believes, he sees.  No wise man has the power to reason away."

Who's the fool?  Maybe me.  Maybe you.  Maybe it's Mr. T (who pities the fool, ironically).  Line have been drawn and nobody's gonna change sides.  Oh well.  Good debate, anyway!



dahuman on 19 October 2010

I've been a PC gamer for too long might be the problem, but it does make me realize that people are OK with being sheeps and cows, that's just how a lot of people go about life I guess.



dahuman on 19 October 2010
dahuman said:
Shadowblind said:
dahuman said:
reidlosdog said:
dahuman said:
d21lewis said:

my kid is on my Pc and im posting from my phone. not being able to reply directly is killing me! I'll make this short and sweet; just because something isn't valuable to you guys above me doesn't mean they arent of value to others. i have a PC obviously but I use netflix and last FM all the time (use netflix on all consoles and PC but 360 was the reason I subscribed years ago).

 

If you guys don't see the value in live, don't use it.  The PS3 and 360 are presenting themselves as more than just gaming systems.  That's where the featres list come in.  I didn't list things like blu-ray on PS3 or custom soundtracks on 360 because this is about Live's value.  Maybe Live vs PSN vs Wii vs PC.  But for me and many others, the feature list means something.

(thia is getting long!) Features that influence gameplay: multiple accounts logged in on a single console at one, leaderboards for all games, cross game chat, true skill, recomendations, voice messages, mute other players in all games, annouces when a friend is playing the same game as you (not sure if ps3 does this-never had it happen) party system,

I'll return later.


I saw some value in it when Halo 3 was still good times for me, but all good things come to an end as I get bored of things (Gravity Hammer still wins to this day though,) and I'm able to play multiplat online games for nothing on PS3 so the only good thing I missed so far is Alan Wake, which is not enough for me to buy the 360 again unfortunately. I have like 6 computers in my house hold though, so I see no value in Live at all when any 5 year old PC can do better for free when you are talking about those features, and I had Netflix years ago for my PC but eventually I stopped seeing value in that too since all I used it for was ripping anime and releasing them which I evetually didn't have time for anymore, though I did watch a ton of Discovery or National Geography stream stuff.

The difference I guess is that PS3 is not as much a closed platform (still closed as hell but not 360 or Wii level) when it comes to some standard features on Live so it varies per game (VoIP options that is) depending on the devs.

Also, 360 and PS3 both suck when it comes to actual online multimedia features, 360's therelackof flexibility or PS3's crappy web broswer, so you are right, I'd never consider them to be more than gaming machines, they are just bad bad bad. =_=;

"the question of the OP is Xbox Live worth it.  I would say the discounts we get alone make it worth it, but then again, I play online a lot, and I as showed earlier, online gaming isn't as important to the PS3 consumer.  Plus x-gaming chat, party chat, Netflix search options (thank god for that), ESPN, Games on Demand (I haven't bought a game from Gamestop that wasn't less than a year old, cause now I can actually pay the creator directly for cheap, and not have disc),  almost all games have trial or demo to them, Indie games are soooooooooo cheap, and we get amazing discounts like buy $30 of MS points get $10 free(it might be different, but anyone that knows what I'm talking about understands)?

I just made that list and easily think that $60 a year is fine, though I won't be paying that ever cause of the new family pack for $25 a person!!

seriously guys, put that all together, and your mind will explode."

stated in earlier post also that the 360 consumer plays more online gaming than the PC user.

PSN has all those gaming features too for nothing though o_O; discounts, demos, yaddy yada, and indie games too, shit they actually have castle crashers now O_O;;;;; I loved that game on 360 lol, it was Halo3 and that for me tbh. People tend to spend more time when paying to get their money's worth btw, so the stats didn't surprise me.

Castle Crashers isn't an indie game . . .

I know, but Trine is /shrug, if you are talking about Arcade, then 360 prolly has a ton more, only most of them sale terribly.


btw, I did some research, Castle Crashers was actually in IGF and won an award so it's pretty much confirmed full Indie. /shrug



d21lewis on 19 October 2010
dahuman said:

I've been a PC gamer for too long might be the problem, but it does make me realize that people are OK with being sheeps and cows, that's just how a lot of people go about life I guess.


It's your inability to accept that people may percieve things differently than you that makes you so cute!  Sheep(s?) and cows, huh?  Okay......