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Forums - Gaming - Xbox Live adds 6 Million members in a single Year, is the hate unjustified?

 

Does Xbox Live deserve the criticism it gets in the forums?

Yes Xbox Live is a rip off 221 45.19%
 
No Xbox Live is the best ... 208 42.54%
 
No opinion / don't care 60 12.27%
 
Total:489
yo_john117 on 21 April 2013
Scoobes said:
yo_john117 said:
Tachikoma said:

I'm sure the 6 million new members is absolutely nothing to do with the annual banwaves or the spate of new nokia lumina phones that integrate xbl features, or people just making new accounts and other such things, it's for sure just 6 million people that went out and paid full retail for a years subscription...

Really though, registration numbers mean nothing, i freaking dare you to find a person that has just one account on the ps3 or 360.

As for the argument of "is it worth it", that's entirely up to the individual, sure it would be nicer if it was free, but it is not, you either pay or you dont, if your opinion is it's crap then that's your *opinion*, there are millions of paying live members who would dissagree, just like theres millions of potential online players who wish it wouldn't cost them extra to play online.

My only issue with it is that premium services should be a 'value added service', rather than an 'added service', so here's hoping the next xbox will allow a modcrum of online functionality for games, and just reserve access to premium servers and such for gold members.

In this case though, they do mean something. When MS announces how many Xbox live users there are, they are only counting active accounts (Which I believe is any account used within the last 8 months). So any old accounts aren't counted. Most Xbox users I know only have 1 main account at a time because of the way Live accounts work (most don't want to start a new account after putting so much time and money into that account). Sure virtually everyone I know has made other alternate 1 or 3 month accounts (I have 3 of them myself from back in the Halo 3 days, nothing even remotely current though) before just as mess around accounts in CoD or Halo but those accounts aren't counted after a certain time period.

So as far as these numbers are concerned, they really are rather insightful and far from meaningless. I would reckon around 80% of the 46 million are unique accounts.

That seems like a really bizzare number of months to choose. Any idea why it's 8 months?

Personally, it'd be nice if there was some kind of industry standard when it came to reporting these numbers (doubt that's ever going to happen) so the numbers are actually somewhat comparable. For instance, Steam reports active accounts as someone that's purchased a game and has logged in in the last 30 days. Sony on the other hand just report the number of accounts accross PSN which is obviously huge.

Trying to figure out what's actually relevant is near impossible.

Yeah I think MS simply had a dartboard with months 1-12 on it and threw a random dart to decide how many months would be counted for an account to be "current". 

Personally I feel that any account that's been used within a month or two should be considered current.

An industery wide standard (or at least closer than the current) would certainly be nice.



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ironmanDX on 21 April 2013

It's so sad that this thread is still going... I'll say again, You're all arguing over something that costs me $3 a month that you don't even pay for. Please go away now and realise that this is stupid. I pay more than $3 a month to wipe my ass with toilet paper but guess what? I could just save money by using the local newspaper for toilet paper and/or steal it from the local shopping centre.


That's what this thread is. A ridiculous argument over $3 a month.....



Playstationfan12 on 21 April 2013
kain_kusanagi said:
Playstationfan12 said:
Well it looks like 6mil more people are getting ripped off just to play the same 2 games each year when they can play better games online for free on psn. Their loss not mine


1. You shouldn't tell other people what they can and can't do with their money. They earned it and if they like what they are paying for they aren't being ripped off.

2. You have considerably underestimated the number of games on Xbox 360.

3. Your opinion of what games are better has nothing to do with what games other people consider worth paying to play online.

It's actualy your loss, not theirs.





Playstationfan12 on 21 April 2013

@kain_kusangi
1 I wasn't trying to tell people what they should do with their money. I was just trying to say that they shouldn't be paying for something that should be free.
2 I was referring to the amount of exclusives Xbox has. Why else would someone want to buy one?
3 same can be said about you and Xbox live
If people don't want to play the wide variety of ps exclusives like Uncharted, god of war, infamous, LBP, etc just to play the same 2 repetitive shooters each year, then I'm not going to stop them but they are missing out.



ironmanDX on 21 April 2013
Playstationfan12 said:
@kain_kusangi
1 I wasn't trying to tell people what they should do with their money. I was just trying to say that they shouldn't be paying for something that should be free.
2 I was referring to the amount of exclusives Xbox has. Why else would someone want to buy one?
3 same can be said about you and Xbox live
If people don't want to play the wide variety of ps exclusives like Uncharted, god of war, infamous, LBP, etc just to play the same 2 repetitive shooters each year, then I'm not going to stop them but they are missing out.


Hey, look everyone! Someone on the internet telling people what they should and shouldn't do! How original. Please friend, refer yourself to my previous post and read it.



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yo_john117 on 21 April 2013
ironmanDX said:
Playstationfan12 said:
@kain_kusangi
1 I wasn't trying to tell people what they should do with their money. I was just trying to say that they shouldn't be paying for something that should be free.
2 I was referring to the amount of exclusives Xbox has. Why else would someone want to buy one?
3 same can be said about you and Xbox live
If people don't want to play the wide variety of ps exclusives like Uncharted, god of war, infamous, LBP, etc just to play the same 2 repetitive shooters each year, then I'm not going to stop them but they are missing out.


Hey, look everyone! Someone on the internet telling people what they should and shouldn't do! How original. Please friend, refer yourself to my previous post and read it.

Eh, he's probably just an alt account; ignore him.



dsgrue3 on 22 April 2013
ironmanDX said:
It's so sad that this thread is still going... I'll say again, You're all arguing over something that costs me $3 a month that you don't even pay for. Please go away now and realise that this is stupid. I pay more than $3 a month to wipe my ass with toilet paper but guess what? I could just save money by using the local newspaper for toilet paper and/or steal it from the local shopping centre.


That's what this thread is. A ridiculous argument over $3 a month.....

I see this argument often. It isn't the price, it isn't even the total concept of Live. The package of features itself isn't the issue.

The issue is paying to play online. MS does not have dedicated servers for retail games - although I'm told they have ones for XBLA ones. All MS does is enhance architecture already setup by devs. Devs use p2p or their own dedicated servers for the multiplayer component so why is MS charging you to use what already exists?



J_Allard on 22 April 2013

Because those games use MS servers for matchmaking and the Live features. You know, the very things that make Live online play so much better. Servers and infrastructure that MS invested billions into.



dsgrue3 on 22 April 2013
J_Allard said:
Because those games use MS servers for matchmaking and the Live features. You know, the very things that make Live online play so much better. Servers and infrastructure that MS invested billions into.

So you're paying to be put into a particular game lobby built by the devs, running on the devs hardware or p2p. Makes sense to be locked out of using what's already there.



J_Allard on 22 April 2013

And you're put there with all the great features Live makes mandatory across all games ;)

Would you rather MS foot the bill for online servers and design for all games and Live cost $150 a year? Not seeing your issue.