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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Why Steam is Awesome, and How You Can Make Live Free

evolution_1ne said:

seems more like a hope/ wishful thinking to me. And even though my point still stands PSN users WON'T pay for it, I don't give a crap what they offer, if online gaming is charged next gen Sony is fucked.

P.S. M$ charging for Live has nothing to do with it because they did the same last gen......

Sony is fucked if they charge next gen? No, I think Sony is fucked if they launch a console more than double the price of the competitors again.

The masses don't even play game consoles online. Hence, the masses won't care if Sony charges for online play.

P.S. Did Xbox Live really show potential to be a massive success last gen? No, it happened this gen. MS proved people will pay and Sony wants in on that.

Sony barely even mentions PS3 has free online play anymore. I wonder why?



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richardhutnik said:
makingmusic476 said:
 

 

richardhutnik said:

Wow, I wish free services like what the PS3 and Wii have had nearly the same level of demos that XBox does.  Because people pay for online play, everything from Game Room to Indie games, gets demos.  Demos on the Playstation 3?  Well, mostly the major disk based released.  Playstation store distributed exclusives don't get any.  As far as the Wii goes, that is NONE available online.

Now, back to the original premise.  Somehow, this premise is that large numbers of gamers will magically organize themselves and decide not to pay for Live, thus Microsoft would be forced to discontinue charging for online play... well, based on my first-hand experience, that wish is one that won't happen, no matter how much people wish it be so.  No guarantee Microsoft would end up dropping the fee if membership went down.  Shoot, they might even decide to INCREASE prices.  So, you then get lots of people without XBox Live, and playing online.

Want to get organized for something?  How about getting organized for something more important, like helping people find work, or helping the poor?  Or, something even more simple, which is gaming related: Ignore Pachter to the place where VGChartz will stop dedicating articles to his predictions?  I am yet again graced with a Pachter article once more when I pop on here, this time declaring the PSP2 dead before it is even released.

Paying for LIve is entirely unrelated to the fact that Microsoft mandates that all XBLA games have a demo.  Providing a demo is only an added burden for the developer, who then has to prepare multiple builds of their products for release.  Sony could easily mandate demos for all PSN releases as well, but they simply choose not to, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they aren't charging for online play. 

Though I agree that such a practice is disappointing.  If only this thread were about ps3 or Wii, maybe we could talk about this more in-depth.

And I'll go make a thread on helping people find work right now, if that's what constitutes "getting organized" in your book.  =/

This would end up going off on a tangent if it were discussed fully.  I would add here, that maybe it exists because Microsoft mandates demos for everything.  However, with the PS3, Sony charges fees to developers for each time demos or content is downloaded.  It is a fee for each Gig of bandwidth used for downloading.  Sony and Nintendo follow different business models, which result in different services being provided to people who use their services.  Instead of pay to play online, Sony decides to do Playstation Plus at $50/year, which is to access discounts and some free content.  The pay to play online enables Microsoft to do things differently.

Hey on the thread to help people get work, it would likely require a lot more, but I am up for something in this area.


Again... you can get demos without paying for XBL, I do it all the time!



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Mr Puggsly said:
Alby_da_Wolf said:

2) Maybe I wasn't very clear, but it matters, it has to do with what were priorities for MS in the past and what are currently and that past MS priorities tend to bias my analysis of XBL, making me incorrectly tend to exclude, or at least to consider less likely that it prioritizes profit and profit margin. Sorry but I'm falling asleep and I can't find a clearer way to put this stuff.

Well when you put it that way... it stiill doesen't matter.

Now its becoming about how you feel about MS.

Actually what I wrote means a different thing, that how I feel about MS and its past behaviour tends to bias me towards attributing it the same behaviour now, despite facts show me that in XBL business it prioritized profit instead of expanding user base at any cost. So actually it matters to explain what I wrote and that at least about the profit aspect of the business I must admit that your statements make sense for me too, if I put apart my feelings about MS. Also because you specified in a previous message "I hardly feel like a minority paying for Live considering its considerably more active than PSN. Also, I'm in the US which is where the 360 is going pretty strong", it's natural that if you write from USA where XB360 and XBL are stronger than their WW average, and I write from EU, we see quite different situations. BTW, about feelings, what I feel about MS influences my reasonment in the same exact way how you feel about it does to your reasonment, don't think you are immune from bias.




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Alby_da_Wolf said:

Good! This makes sense. The costs that engineer talked about, though, affect also the free versions of Sony and MS networks independently from whether they offer basic online multiplayer or not. Those costs are unavoidable, for at least two reasons: First, console users expect and pretend a hassle free experience, this extends also to network connection, so all this burden falls on the providers' shoulders, that in consoles are the manufacturers themselves. Second, console manufacturers want to keep total controlon their platforms, including net access, this has a huge cost.

MS model is a way to be sure the network part of the business is profitable too, other models are possible, most probably Sony model, given its big share in movie and multimedia market, allows it to replace the basic online multiplayer revenue it gives up with movies and other "classic" entertainment sales revenue.

I guess my "frugal" concept of online multiplayer can work well without risking to sink companies only on PC, because it's a platform not affected by default by those special and expensive needs of  both console producers and users. Valve model works too, but it's quite different too, as it has a very strong sales revenue. Successful MMOGs are furtherly different (and the annual fees of the pay ones are usually greater than XBL Gold subscription). Crappy MMOGs like FarmVille are able to profit from a small percent (but big as absolute number of users) share that pays for premium features on a huge total user base of which the vast majority plays for free, and strongly limiting costs giving each user a very small world (BTW not connected in real time with other players), relying on Facebook and other social networks, making deals with them and limiting the infrastructure costs making a lot of transactions not real time, but based on social networks messaging system (this way the whole gift sending part of the game requires them to manage some transactions per minute with each user instead of several transactions per second as it happens in real time worlds; and also the real time part about actually working on the virtual fields and farms is very slow, limiting transaction rate too).

The instant you're on a pay to play model you get a few more options to improve the basic level of enjoyment on the platform. Firstly you can implement a moderation system with paid moderators. An unpaid system simply cannot support moderation like that because the revenue model tends towards the basic tenets of service. Anything which would improve customer enjoyment which costs money on a per player basis would be very difficult to employ on a free service.

"I think the thing that sometimes even I don't fully appreciate – and I think I have a greater appreciation for it today, having spent a lot of time up with Microsoft recently – but they invest billions of dollars in the Live platform. Billing, credit collection, things like foreign currency conversion, being able to manage point systems. All of that is extremely expensive to manage and maintain."

Bobby Kotick

It also allows a company to invest development resources into improving services for one you have True Skill:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trueskill

For second you have real time bleeping which seems to be coming soon given the fact they recently got granted the patent and other such pure research which can be funded off Live revenue.

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2008/10/microsoft-gets-patent-for-real-time-f-bomb-bleeping.ars

Thirdly you get resources to develop the online system like for instance the Xbox Live party system which doesn't have an equivalent in any other online service which enables friends who play together to stay together.

Fourth you get universal services like voice chat. If you consider a server model with 7 or more people involved in a party system the costs scale exponentially, this is why Ventrillo servers cost to upkeep. Instead of it merely being a peer to peer system, each time you send a voice comment it gets recieved by a server and rebroadcast between 1 and 15 times to different parties depending on the number of people connected. The cost of this is significantly higher than a mere one to one skype conversation. This is the reason why PSN still doesn't have a party chat because Sony likely hasn't figured out how to do it on the cheap.

Err what am I saying here?

Anyway I think they get a bad rap for charging for online somewhat unfairly. You do get the typical loud internet type person who loves to complain and it does make a very good target to complain about after Obama and before whatever Apple did wrong this time. So in a concise fashion it is fair enough to not value the whole entirety of the offering or not see value in it. In the end they are offering fun in exchange for money and if a free option is a better value proposition then fair enough. However without Live to spur and encourage investment within other services and in particular the free services, free today would not have been nearly as nice without the paid Live of yesterday.

 

 

 



Tease.

Some good discussions going on here.  I am about to head to lunch but I will contribute some comments afterwards.  Would just like to post a link to an MS engineering blog about the XBox Live architecture and how developers can customize their use of it.  Doesn't directly relate to the discussion, but it just gives people a better idea of the Live architecture.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Live/EngineeringBlog/072810-DevelopersCustomizeLive

 

And Squilliam, here is a little tidbit on how MS makes party chat work effectively.  It is similar to how a donnybrook multiplayer system would work.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Live/EngineeringBlog/032310-XboxLiveParties

Distributed Voice

The network traffic from your game and your party both take up one of the console’s limited resources: network bandwidth.  One of the biggest optimizations we made to the code was to limit the amount of upload bandwidth that Xbox LIVE Parties use.  Upload bandwidth is the data being sent from your console (as opposed to download bandwidth when data is sent to your console).  In most game scenarios, upload bandwidth is scarcer than download bandwidth.  When you speak into your microphone, the party system needs to send your voice data to up to seven other consoles.  That means that speaking causes a huge upload spike – identical data is sent seven times, once per remote console.

To reduce that bandwidth usage, the party system employs a neat trick to distribute the upload bandwidth.  If there are seven other people in my party, my console only sends data to three of them.  That means roughly 60% less upload bandwidth is used.  When those three consoles receive my voice data, they act as ‘repeaters’.  That means that in addition to playing my voice back, they may also send it to the remaining consoles.  With this algorithm, each console sends voice data to at most three other consoles.  That limits the total amount of data uploaded in normal situations and spreads the bandwidth among party members.



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JaggedSac said:

Some good discussions going on here.  I am about to head to lunch but I will contribute some comments afterwards.  Would just like to post a link to an MS engineering blog about the XBox Live architecture and how developers can customize their use of it.  Doesn't directly relate to the discussion, but it just gives people a better idea of the Live architecture.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Live/EngineeringBlog/072810-DevelopersCustomizeLive

 

And Squilliam, here is a little tidbit on how MS makes party chat work effectively.  It is similar to how a donnybrook multiplayer system would work.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Live/EngineeringBlog/032310-XboxLiveParties

Distributed Voice

The network traffic from your game and your party both take up one of the console’s limited resources: network bandwidth.  One of the biggest optimizations we made to the code was to limit the amount of upload bandwidth that Xbox LIVE Parties use.  Upload bandwidth is the data being sent from your console (as opposed to download bandwidth when data is sent to your console).  In most game scenarios, upload bandwidth is scarcer than download bandwidth.  When you speak into your microphone, the party system needs to send your voice data to up to seven other consoles.  That means that speaking causes a huge upload spike – identical data is sent seven times, once per remote console.

To reduce that bandwidth usage, the party system employs a neat trick to distribute the upload bandwidth.  If there are seven other people in my party, my console only sends data to three of them.  That means roughly 60% less upload bandwidth is used.  When those three consoles receive my voice data, they act as ‘repeaters’.  That means that in addition to playing my voice back, they may also send it to the remaining consoles.  With this algorithm, each console sends voice data to at most three other consoles.  That limits the total amount of data uploaded in normal situations and spreads the bandwidth among party members.


Cool stuff there, still dislike peer to peer a lot and always have lol but that chat trick is impressive.

It really pisses me off that they're not actually handling the bandwidth of your games but making it run off your own connection, which then leads to host advantage, I rage about it in Super Smash Bros Brawl online but at least there I'm not required to pay if I want to play it.  

Like personally I really want Reach and the local multiplayer is really tempting me, but if XBL was free Reach would have been a day 1 done deal, it's really hard to sell myself on something when one of the biggest components of the product is closed off to me unless I pay extra



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MaxwellGT2000 said:


Cool stuff there, still dislike peer to peer a lot and always have lol but that chat trick is impressive.

It really pisses me off that they're not actually handling the bandwidth of your games but making it run off your own connection, which then leads to host advantage, I rage about it in Super Smash Bros Brawl online but at least there I'm not required to pay if I want to play it.  

Like personally I really want Reach and the local multiplayer is really tempting me, but if XBL was free Reach would have been a day 1 done deal, it's really hard to sell myself on something when one of the biggest components of the product is closed off to me unless I pay extra

MS doesn't force developers to use P2P.  Devs can do whatever they want.  Gears 2 rolled out dedicated servers in a patch.  Section 8 used ServerX tech which allows people to host their own servers and play over Live.  Devs like to use P2P because it scales easily and is cost effective.



JaggedSac said:
MaxwellGT2000 said:


Cool stuff there, still dislike peer to peer a lot and always have lol but that chat trick is impressive.

It really pisses me off that they're not actually handling the bandwidth of your games but making it run off your own connection, which then leads to host advantage, I rage about it in Super Smash Bros Brawl online but at least there I'm not required to pay if I want to play it.  

Like personally I really want Reach and the local multiplayer is really tempting me, but if XBL was free Reach would have been a day 1 done deal, it's really hard to sell myself on something when one of the biggest components of the product is closed off to me unless I pay extra

MS doesn't force developers to use P2P.  Devs can do whatever they want.  Gears 2 rolled out dedicated servers in a patch.  Section 8 used ServerX tech which allows people to host their own servers and play over Live.  Devs like to use P2P because it scales easily and is cost effective.


Section 8 is a terrible game though lol 

And when did Gears 2 get servers?  Just curious as last time my friends talked about it (not long after it came out) it had terrible lag cause it was peer to peer.

Also I don't care what developers use, I have an xbox for xbox exclusives, which mostly means what Microsoft themselves make, they basically use peer to peer on everything, I'm not paying for that lol



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MaxwellGT2000 said:


Section 8 is a terrible game though lol 

And when did Gears 2 get servers?  Just curious as last time my friends talked about it (not long after it came out) it had terrible lag cause it was peer to peer.

Also I don't care what developers use, I have an xbox for xbox exclusives, which mostly means what Microsoft themselves make, they basically use peer to peer on everything, I'm not paying for that lol

Quality of the game notwithstanding, it just shows that there are a multitude of options for devs when they go about implementing online play.

Title Update 6 brought dedicated servers to Gears 2:  http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/112/1126271p1.html

Gears 3 will use dedicated servers as well(as read in the previous link).  Gears 2 was sort of a test bed for that.  Most likely it will be a mixture of P2P and dedicated servers.  Matchmaking using dedicated whilst private lobbies use P2P.

Forza 3 uses dedicated servers as well: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/112/1126271p1.html.  Matchmaking uses dedicated while private lobbies uses P2P.

 

It is all about what the devs need and want.  Bungie has such uber net code that P2P works great for them.  Also, the ginormous userbase makes P2P a financially sound implementation.



JaggedSac said:
MaxwellGT2000 said:


Section 8 is a terrible game though lol 

And when did Gears 2 get servers?  Just curious as last time my friends talked about it (not long after it came out) it had terrible lag cause it was peer to peer.

Also I don't care what developers use, I have an xbox for xbox exclusives, which mostly means what Microsoft themselves make, they basically use peer to peer on everything, I'm not paying for that lol

Quality of the game notwithstanding, it just shows that there are a multitude of options for devs when they go about implementing online play.

Title Update 6 brought dedicated servers to Gears 2:  http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/112/1126271p1.html

Gears 3 will use dedicated servers as well(as read in the previous link).  Gears 2 was sort of a test bed for that.  Most likely it will be a mixture of P2P and dedicated servers.  Matchmaking using dedicated whilst private lobbies use P2P.

Forza 3 uses dedicated servers as well: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/112/1126271p1.html.  Matchmaking uses dedicated while private lobbies uses P2P.

 

It is all about what the devs need and want.  Bungie has such uber net code that P2P works great for them.  Also, the ginormous userbase makes P2P a financially sound implementation.


Eh other than games like Smash Bros and Halo melting down servers (I was actually online for both occurrences lol), most games don't require that sort of upkeep and therefore could easily have servers.

Even with a few games using servers on XBL, it in no way justifies 50 dollars a year (didn't it recently go up to 60?)  I mean that's a few games to me, I don't mind seeing some banner ads to play my games online, but Xbox Live has ads and subscription fees and I don't quite understand the true need for any of that.

I see the cost effective thing but its like "we're already paying you guys 60 dollars (typically) per game, the least you could do is let me play online for a few hours till I get bored" lol



MaxwellGT2000 - "Does the amount of times you beat it count towards how hardcore you are?"

Wii Friend Code - 5882 9717 7391 0918 (PM me if you add me), PSN - MaxwellGT2000, XBL - BlkKniteCecil, MaxwellGT2000