its a good deal for the price and helps improve the service for everyone. if microsoft had a cash cow like the ps2, perhaps they could go without charging. or even if they had handheld that could bring in some extra cash. microsoft is working with what they have and are doing a damn good job.

BenKenobi88 said: Sansui said: Um... maybe to SOME of you pc gaming online is free, but have you ever been the one shelling out for the dedicated servers and voice chat servers? There's a lot of generous people that offer their servers up for public play, or mooch off a university network or other workplace network where they have connections and no culpability. There's the cost of the hardware to run those servers and the cost of bandwidth, and the cost of time for update and administration of those servers if you do it yourself. At one point back in the day I was shelling out 180/month for a server + voice chat server for my team. I wish Live was free too, but I pay less than 4 bucks a month for what I consider reasonable enough quality of service to pay a whopping 4 bucks. This is true, but at least you own your server and can do with it what you please in that case. I've thought about getting a few of my friends and starting a TF2 server, we've got available hardware, a T1 connection available...but we're fine on public servers, as are most players...your average PC gamer isn't going to pay for a server.

This is true.  Having your own server and being able to do whatever you want with it is nice :)  But the real point is that there are still costs in PC gaming.... it's just most people never see it because there's a smaller number of people who pay a *whole* lot more (as in my case, 180/month) or mooch off of university/work connections who unintentionally foot the bill. 

 

Sansui said: BenKenobi88 said: Sansui said: Um... maybe to SOME of you pc gaming online is free, but have you ever been the one shelling out for the dedicated servers and voice chat servers? There's a lot of generous people that offer their servers up for public play, or mooch off a university network or other workplace network where they have connections and no culpability. There's the cost of the hardware to run those servers and the cost of bandwidth, and the cost of time for update and administration of those servers if you do it yourself. At one point back in the day I was shelling out 180/month for a server + voice chat server for my team. I wish Live was free too, but I pay less than 4 bucks a month for what I consider reasonable enough quality of service to pay a whopping 4 bucks. This is true, but at least you own your server and can do with it what you please in that case. I've thought about getting a few of my friends and starting a TF2 server, we've got available hardware, a T1 connection available...but we're fine on public servers, as are most players...your average PC gamer isn't going to pay for a server. This is true.  Having your own server and being able to do whatever you want with it is nice :)  But the real point is that there are still costs in PC gaming.... it's just most people never see it because there's a smaller number of people who pay a *whole* lot more (as in my case, 180/month) or mooch off of university/work connections who unintentionally foot the bill.

 

So how many pc games have voice chat built into them?  I know my father had to get something extra in order to talk over Battlefield?

JaggedSac said: So how many pc games have voice chat built into them?  I know my father had to get something extra in order to talk over Battlefield?

 

A lot of modern games have some kind of voice chat built in, but IMO most of them suck balls, and no one ever uses them.  Most people will rent a Teamspeak or Ventrilo server for voice chat with team/friends.  Or a lot of times a dedicated game server will let you run your app on the same box. 

It's not too bad these days, you can usually get a Ventrilo server for under 10 bucks a month that has all the slots you need.  But again, not free :)  There is a cost, and *someone* is paying them.

Most pc gamers are just spoiled because their friends and team owners/managers have been paying their share of the cost for years on end.

JaggedSac said: Sansui said: BenKenobi88 said: Sansui said: Um... maybe to SOME of you pc gaming online is free, but have you ever been the one shelling out for the dedicated servers and voice chat servers? There's a lot of generous people that offer their servers up for public play, or mooch off a university network or other workplace network where they have connections and no culpability. There's the cost of the hardware to run those servers and the cost of bandwidth, and the cost of time for update and administration of those servers if you do it yourself. At one point back in the day I was shelling out 180/month for a server + voice chat server for my team. I wish Live was free too, but I pay less than 4 bucks a month for what I consider reasonable enough quality of service to pay a whopping 4 bucks. This is true, but at least you own your server and can do with it what you please in that case. I've thought about getting a few of my friends and starting a TF2 server, we've got available hardware, a T1 connection available...but we're fine on public servers, as are most players...your average PC gamer isn't going to pay for a server. This is true.  Having your own server and being able to do whatever you want with it is nice :)  But the real point is that there are still costs in PC gaming.... it's just most people never see it because there's a smaller number of people who pay a *whole* lot more (as in my case, 180/month) or mooch off of university/work connections who unintentionally foot the bill.      So how many pc games have voice chat built into them?  I know my father had to get something extra in order to talk over Battlefield?

Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142 have VOIP built right in, and it actually works really well without any third party additions.  Some people like to use third party VOIP software when they play those games.

 

The thing I don't think people realize about XBox Live is that MICROSOFT AREN'T HOSTING THE SERVERS. You realize that the vast majority of games set up the player with the best connection as the host. All you are paying Microsoft for is to set up those matches. You aren't paying them to host files and demos, those are available to Silver users who pay nothing. You aren't paying them for voice chatting/messaging because those are available to Silver members who pay nothing. You aren't paying for them to host your Gamerscore because that's available to Silver members who pay nothing.

All you pay Microsoft to do is to set up multiplayer matches. Then they waste no bandwidth as they make the person with the fastest connection the host. You guys are paying for the part of XBox Live that takes up probably the least bandwidth/server use, the match-making part.

And for those games that do have dedicated servers, well Microsoft doesn't host those either. It's up to the developer/publisher to host those.

I think making people think XBox Live is worth paying $50/year for is one of the best things Microsoft has ever done for their bottom line.

Paying Gold members are contributing to the cost of providing the features that Silver members receive for free.

Also, it's not just a case of comparing PSN to Live or PC gaming. You have to compare the entire systems and the features and games they offer. An Xbox 360 + Live is better value to me than a PS3 + PSN, even though I have to pay £25 a year if I want to play online. Online PC gaming can be great, but you don't have that unified set of features across all games that you get with a console. You don't even get that with a PS3.

Sansui said: JaggedSac said: So how many pc games have voice chat built into them?  I know my father had to get something extra in order to talk over Battlefield?   A lot of modern games have some kind of voice chat built in, but IMO most of them suck balls, and no one ever uses them.  Most people will rent a Teamspeak or Ventrilo server for voice chat with team/friends.  Or a lot of times a dedicated game server will let you run your app on the same box.  It's not too bad these days, you can usually get a Ventrilo server for under 10 bucks a month that has all the slots you need.  But again, not free :)  There is a cost, and *someone* is paying them. Most pc gamers are just spoiled because their friends and team owners/managers have been paying their share of the cost for years on end.

Ah, I see.  So people pay $10 just for voip?

 

Normally I don't have much to bitch about with XBL, however, I just bought Jade Empire through the service and it is only 51% downloaded. The problem is, I bought it on Saturday night. The problem isn't my connection. A gigabyte should take an hour to download from and average to slow server. It has been somewhere over 28 hours (taking out the time the download was paused while I was watching TV on the 360) now and the file is just now over half way done. This is dialup speed. If I had known the download was going to take this long, I would have kept searching Gamestops or bought it off of ebay.

I give this thread a 9.4.

Profcrab said: Normally I don't have much to bitch about with XBL, however, I just bought Jade Empire through the service and it is only 51% downloaded. The problem is, I bought it on Saturday night. The problem isn't my connection. A gigabyte should take an hour to download from and average to slow server. It has been somewhere over 28 hours (taking out the time the download was paused while I was watching TV on the 360) now and the file is just now over half way done. This is dialup speed. If I had known the download was going to take this long, I would have kept searching Gamestops or bought it off of ebay. I give this thread a 9.4.

 

Have you stopped it and started it again?  I have never had something take that long to download.  I downloaded Assassination of Jesse James in HD the other day and I was able to watch the movie while it was downloading without the buffer catching up(After about an hour of initial downloading).  It was around 7 GB I believe.