Haha, Zizzla, that's just won you some points in my book.
Ok, I haven't read all of the posts here, but am I the only one that feels this is all happening because they have big, Big, BIG community plans for next Monday's E3 press conference event?
MS has a different business model with Live than other online providers. They choose to charge customers a small fee for several reasons. One, is to recuperate the cost of running the huge infrastructure. Two, is to reinvest in said service. This is why Live has a constant supply of new features, XNA, NXE, etc. Microsoft also needs money to pay for content rights for movies, tv shows, music, etc, so subscriptions is another revenue stream to gather more content for the customers. I am more than willing to pay for something when the money will be used to add value to the service. Primetime is looking to be a good example. Fun and prizes.
Also, standardization is a great thing. All developers use the same Live API, so us customers know what we can expect.
And there have been many, many pay to play online services on pc in the past. It isn't like MS is the first to try pay to play. Just one of the first to succeed, mostly due to great service and value visibility.
Steam has been playing catch up to Live in terms of feature sets. Especially the ones someone mentioned above. It is free, that is about it. But that is very important to some people.
Personally, the party system and matchmaking alone make Live worth the money. One of the benefits of P2P online play. And in case someone doesn't know, there are still infrastructure costs to having P2P online play. Just not as much. Master servers and such.
SamuelRSmith said:
Have I tried it? I'm constantly logged into it. It offers more features than Live. It has the whole friend list, cross game chatting/messaging, achievements, cross-game invites, DLC, achievements, etc. It also offers a gifting service (buying games for other friends), a guest pass service, game trials, and servcies such as Steam Cloud which uploads your save file to Steam servers so you can continue playing from the same Save file on any machine that you log in to. The Achievements system is also better than Live in the sense that it tracks achievement progress (so, if there's an achievement for getting a thousand kills in Team Fortress 2, it'll track how many kills you are away from getting that Achievement. The service also offers extensive game tracking, a bit like Bungie.net but built straight into the Steam interface. The service also keeps track of how much you are playing, and awards you "Steam Ratings" based on it. It also offers all the benefits of gaming on PC like automatic game updates, and not having to change the disc to play the game. Not to mention that the service is entirely free. Your move. |
I believe Valve started this and it's like that on the 360 version of The Orange Box as well. Other newer games have started using this system as well which I really like. I've noticed it in Gears of War 2 and of course Left 4 Dead.
Consoles Owned: Atari 2600, NES, Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, N64, Gamecube, Wii, XBOX360
Xbox live is a good online service.
The fact that you have to pay 30-50$ a year to have gold status is okay, since microsoft is finally going to make it worth our while. Having to have it to play multiplayer is a big reason also.
PSN is pretty good... But the ps3 is not like the xbox 360. It's not tailor made to the online aspect of the console.
I actually think this whole thing is pretty smart by microsoft standards. This way they can take your money even if you stop playing for a half a year. But my point is I don't mind. 3.50 a month isn't so bad especially when it makes the experience so much better.
And that's the only thing I need is *this*. I don't need this or this. Just this PS4... And this gaming PC. - The PS4 and the Gaming PC and that's all I need... And this Xbox 360. - The PS4, the Gaming PC, and the Xbox 360, and that's all I need... And these PS3's. - The PS4, and these PS3's, and the Gaming PC, and the Xbox 360... And this Nintendo DS. - The PS4, this Xbox 360, and the Gaming PC, and the PS3's, and that's all *I* need. And that's *all* I need too. I don't need one other thing, not one... I need this. - The Gaming PC and PS4, and Xbox 360, and thePS3's . Well what are you looking at? What do you think I'm some kind of a jerk or something! - And this. That's all I need.
Obligatory dick measuring Gaming Laptop Specs: Sager NP8270-GTX: 17.3" FULL HD (1920X1080) LED Matte LC, nVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M, Intel Core i7-4700MQ, 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3, 750GB SATA II 3GB/s 7,200 RPM Hard Drive
| JaggedSac said: MS has a different business model with Live than other online providers. They choose to charge customers a small fee for several reasons. One, is to recuperate the cost of running the huge infrastructure. Two, is to reinvest in said service. This is why Live has a constant supply of new features, XNA, NXE, etc. Microsoft also needs money to pay for content rights for movies, tv shows, music, etc, so subscriptions is another revenue stream to gather more content for the customers. I am more than willing to pay for something when the money will be used to add value to the service. Primetime is looking to be a good example. Fun and prizes. Also, standardization is a great thing. All developers use the same Live API, so us customers know what we can expect. And there have been many, many pay to play online services on pc in the past. It isn't like MS is the first to try pay to play. Just one of the first to succeed, mostly due to great service and value visibility. Steam has been playing catch up to Live in terms of feature sets. Especially the ones someone mentioned above. It is free, that is about it. But that is very important to some people. Personally, the party system and matchmaking alone make Live worth the money. One of the benefits of P2P online play. And in case someone doesn't know, there are still infrastructure costs to having P2P online play. Just not as much. Master servers and such. |
This
SamuelRSmith said:
Have I tried it? I'm constantly logged into it. It offers more features than Live. It has the whole friend list, cross game chatting/messaging, achievements, cross-game invites, DLC, achievements, etc. It also offers a gifting service (buying games for other friends), a guest pass service, game trials, and servcies such as Steam Cloud which uploads your save file to Steam servers so you can continue playing from the same Save file on any machine that you log in to. The Achievements system is also better than Live in the sense that it tracks achievement progress (so, if there's an achievement for getting a thousand kills in Team Fortress 2, it'll track how many kills you are away from getting that Achievement. The service also offers extensive game tracking, a bit like Bungie.net but built straight into the Steam interface. The service also keeps track of how much you are playing, and awards you "Steam Ratings" based on it. It also offers all the benefits of gaming on PC like automatic game updates, and not having to change the disc to play the game. Not to mention that the service is entirely free. Your move. |
This isn't chess you know! each to their own I guess but I know which I prefer.....
WTF... when did this become a Live! vs PSN debate... last time I checked Sony doesn't charge for their service and thus doesn't have the same level of consumer responsibility. The idea that you can complain when a free service goes down is crazy. If Live goes down for any real length of time MS has to refund the money in some way... like they did with the free XBLA game.
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