S.T.A.G.E. said:
Obviously MS sees it as a benefit to add it to Xbox Live. People are actually responding to it. See thats the beauty of choice. If you want it you can have it but if you don't who cares?
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I disagree, choice really has nothing to do with it. Not for the sake of being argumentative, but I think Microsoft had to do it in order to remain competative. The only way either Sony or Microsoft make any money on this model is by the sale of DLC. So, you can bet games that they give away will include lots of DLC.
There is no real, practical benefit to PS+ without the free game rental. Up until the 1990's BMG offered a Cassette/CD music club, Sony until it entered a venture with BMG which included buying up part of them and eventually all of them, offered one as well. If you bought one album at regular price, you could buy any number of albums at sale price, which were typically a better deal than retail. Not to mention, if you bought so many regular priced albums, you got free albums. Once Sony completely bought up BMG they discontinued the music club. Once they got rid of their competition, they had no need to compete in that space therefore no reason to offer consumers that choice.
Sony provided free game rentals to entice gamers to subscribe to a service in an effort to fund PSN. That is, Sony needed a revenue stream other than DLC or advertising because neither of those were building clientele and the majority of gamers were using the Xbox 360 as a first platform and the PS3 as a second platform. Offering free game rentals created an automatic draw to the service, an incentive to continually subscribe, and a reason or opportunity to make the PS3 a first platform.
The incentive to subscribe to Xbox LIVE has always been there. It is the only way to play online games. That has been the case since day one. Everything else about Xbox LIVE is an incentive to subscribe or remain a subscriber. Microsoft including free games with the Xbox 360 subscription to Xbox LIVE isn't an acknowledgement that it's smart business, it isn't -- it's risky business, it them acknowledging that consumers see a value in it.
The fact remains, Xbox LIVE's Gaming for Gold is a better value than PS+ free game rental, but regardless, for anyone who continued to subscribe to either respective service on the Xbox One or the PS4 they end up having similar features. I mean really, the differences between the services in terms of features that paid subscribers get are essentially equal. There may be benefits to features and benefits to one service or another that differentiate it, but they are at the core the same.
That said, and to tie this all back to the original argument. Sony, by offering free game rentals is directly paying (money hatting) games. There was one developer who acknowledged, had Sony not paid him to offer the game through PS+, the game would not have made as much money, but more importantly it incentivized him to create another game for Sony's platform.
Granted, Microsoft is doing it on the backside. Microsoft is offering development units for no more than $500. Another developers even acknowledged that if he has five developers, that's only a $2500 investment he has to make compared to the $5000 per dev kit Sony requires. That $20,000 difference is a lot of money he can spend on the game, rather than on hardware. And when you're a small (indie) developer that's a lot of money. While that does incentivize developers to create games on the Microsoft platform, the money saved can just as well go to PS4 dev kits. So, he may have five guys working on the Xbox One compared to four working on the PS4.
Bottomline. As much as people here argue that what Microsoft is doing is bad, it isn't. Invariably what Microsoft does benefits the platform for a period of time, but it gives those partners the opportunity to use their own funds to develop a game on another platform.
The free servers for example. As far as I know, and I doubt there is a long-term restriction on this, the servers Microsoft is giving to developers doesn't exclude the servers from being used for other platforms. They're certainly using the servers for Xbox 360 and PC on Titanfall. Since the servers are a part of the Azure service of servers, I doubt they have any physical IP address restrictions. Developers may be restricted to only the Xbox or Windows platform for a period of time for free but likely they will be able to use those servers for other platforms for a fee. It's in Microsoft's best interest either way to do so.
Not to mention, as much as gamers may see it as a war, I think Microsoft and Sony see it as healthy competition. A game of chess between friends. Yes, both want to come out on top, but both appreciate a well played game.
Microsoft has throughout its history kept competitors in the game, because it needs those competitors. Sony on the other hand is a company that tends to try to crush its competitors. I think that's in part because the two companies come from two very different industries. Microsoft comes from a collaborative industry, computing, where sometimes competitors aren't the competitors everyone thinks they really are. Sony from a winner take all industry, electronics.
