Good luck finding players ten years later. Besides, 360 games still require Live and who knows what will have happened since now?

Unfortunately the Console model is not like the PC model. The dedicated servers need to be hosted by somebody. I am not sure the dedicated server model exists in the same way it does for most PC games allowing a game to continue way after everyone else has forgotten the title. The only problem I see with the dedicated server model on a console is the fact the dedicated servers will get switched off.

The model adopted by the 360 is p2p which technically as long as one person hosts will still have a server to play on.

Most 360 games have excellent multiplayer capabilities and features but they suffer the biggest problem of all in my opinion. That of the person hosting the server turning off his machine, also the dedicated servers allow for a community to build up without the need to actually form any close bond.

The 360 has had dedicated servers Battlefield being one game that springs to mind but it certainly is not common. Large games simply cannot exist in the p2p model because of the host going to bed issue.

I would like to see Microsoft invest in dedicated servers for the more popular games and that would be a good investment of my gold membership.

P2P is practically free, by comparison to dedicated servers.  If you have dedicated servers, someone has to own the servers, pay for the bandwidth, etc.  If you use P2P, you're just leveraging the connectivity and processing power of the players involved, with some minor matchmaking overhead that you provide.

So yes, despite PSN being free, Sony pays for dedicated online servers as well.  XBLive costs, and you pretty much get P2P only.  P2P games are the ones where you really have lag issues, typically.  Servers go a long way toward reducing lag for everyone but the players with bad connections, and toward providing a less hackable game environment as well.

When you see people whine about XBL online compared to PSN, they're basically whining about P2P vs dedicated server play -- its not directly related to the services themselves, but rather highlighting the fact that Sony (1st & 2nd party games) tend to have rock solid client-server networking models, and MS 1st/2nd party, as well as most 3rd party games on both systems, tend to have flakier (but cheap, from the publisher's perspective) P2P models.

If Qore came with it, I would gladly pay for PSN annually for those reasons.  I wouldn't pay for XBL Gold though, unless they started providing the same kind of service for Halo ODST, Halo 3, etc.  The honest truth is that, despite lacking a few glitter features that XBL Gold has (which are esp. great for matchmaking), PSN is the far superior service when it comes right down to the fundamentals of online gaming.

Coop is the real star of R2,64 player coop? no horrible.

what? 32 people games are not even an issue in kz2 (when factions are balanced lol). You can always spawn away from the traffic and pick people off.

If the PS3 games are consistently having more players in each mach, I figure it's mainly because of the servers.  Maybe Sony has dedicated better servers for thier online match-making systems.

I suppose that since the PS3 has more processing power that maybe that helps when running games with many players, but I have the feeling that the server side has more to do with it.

Also, the game needs to be geared towards that many players.  Playing World in Conflict with 64 players would be stupid; The game is geared mainly towards 8v8 matches.

That's not lag or servers, that's just the matchmaking system, and it was not implemented correctly in that game.  Most of the time I am in a match within 30 seconds in any 360 game.

Oh and technically, P2P will continue to get better, because all P2P relies on is a fast download/upload internet speed, so as internet speeds increase accross the boards, so will the quality of the gaming over P2P.  Dedicated servers are better, but for most of the shooter games created in the last 2 generations, they are designed and best played with 16 total players or less.  I've played R2 and KZ2 and hated larger matches.  32 players was about the max I could stand before it just wasn't organized, wasn't challenging, and wasn't fun.

I agree with Nightsurge about the lag issues in lobbies being game-specific, and not having much to do with the service provider at all.

I disagree with the P2P improvement, though, except at the most basic level of "everyone in a P2P game will tend to have a better connection".  P2P is inherently dragged down by the slowest guy, and that's not going to change over time -- only the fact that the slowest guy will tend to not be as slow.  The bigger the match gets, the more players there are to be "the slowest", the more bandwidth you have to pass around to everyone, and the problem gets worse.  P2P will never be feasible for games beyond about 16 v 16, due to some restrictions, that cannot be altered by the mere passage of time... like the speed of light.

Or can it?  Another topic I suppose. =)

Deathmatch and the like maybe 20 players servers are sufficient but for squad based games such as Battlefield and goal orientated team games such as COD then tbh you cannot beat a good old 64 player server.

Call of Duty 4 with 64 players on a PC rocks when playing the right mode and tis a shame because primarily of no dedicated server support that the 360 community cannot get involved also.

The 360 live system has a lot to be praised for but the lack of dedicated server support from Microsoft for the big hitters is frankly embarrassing. Whereas I would agree that p2p games will get better with regards to connectivity issues the simple fact is once that guy goes so does the server and you have to find another home.

I do not play p2p very often the only games on my PC that had it were the COD WAW coop mode and BIA. Unfortunately the p2p experience sucked because of the server closing unexpectedly. I rarely play any game online via my xbox COD 2 and a bit of Halo being the only times I can think of and both have been fine game wise just crap for people staying online long enought to enjoy a good game at times.

Wasn't that Sony's entire business plan when the PS3 launched? "Terrible now... but we swear, games/online experience COMING!"