-The problem with LIVE Gold is, when someone has one console per household and its shared between four or more people, the issue here is Microsoft wants to make the Xbox 360 appealing to the casual gamers and instead they are scaring them away by charging them for each profile they make separately on one console..

I bought my 360 because is was cheaper then compared to a PS3 and not because is was better for gaming online. I felt obligated to pay for Live gold because all I wanted was to game online and not for the extra features.

At first there was 3 separate gold accounts that I used to pay for, now we down to share one for all, I just thought it was unnecessary to keep 3 accounts, so I said F this lets share one account.

Microsoft wants to attract the casual market but the XBOX 360 is everything but casual, for a family of 4 or 5 people per house-hold that ain't the way to persuade them buy charging them to game online per account..

I should say keep gaming online free for Silver members, the added extra features you have to upgrade to Gold ...simple ..

I would say if the Xbox 360 had free online I'll bet you the user-base would be approaching the 45 mil mark instead of currently to 34 mil..

Which of the 3 console is the least casual ?

1) Wii

2) Ps3

3) 360

Its obvious, The Wii is the most user friendly that has a user-base that expanded and still growing rapidly and with the PS3 coming second with the most diverse demographic that's growing steady and expanding and last the 360 that mostly attracts the dedicated of gamers, the group that pays to play and slowly expands .. So, for Microsoft to make the 360 more appealing to the casual gamers, if Microsoft wants to expand its userbase and gain more market share they have to make it more online friendly.   I don't think Natal will do enough alone.

Why would 30% of players be looking for matches at the same time? Do you spend 30% of your online time looking for matches?

As for how many dedicated servers they would need: Let's say 5 million users are playing online at any given moment... and let's say each dedicated server can handle just 100 players (it can probably handle much more than that, especially if using multicore CPUs for the servers). That means they need 50,000 servers running. With 20 million users paying $50 dollars a year (or $1 billion in revenue), if they spent all the money on servers that would cost $20,000 per server per year.

That's an insane price, when many companies offer RETAIL prices of $59 per month per server (and that's not the cheapest by any means).

It would be nice if Microsoft did not charge, This is the way i look at it, I buy the game for $60 bucks, my Comcast bill for Internet is $ 50 plus dollors a month. That is a lot of money , then to pay 50 bucks a year , or 20 bucks every 3 months that really adds up. I have cancelled my XBL account and switched my online gaming over to the PSN and i have to say friends list is not as good but Sonys is getting better, i have no lag on the many games i play , and its free. So do what ever works for you as a gamer.

Well, you cannot plan your infrastructure on maybies and probablies.  If there is a chance something might happen, plan your infrastructure to handle it.  30% is probably a low number for what could feasibly occur on the service.  And server costs usually range around $250-$1250 a month to run depending on the level of quality the server will run at constantly and the more servers you have, the less cost per server for maintenance and such.  So you are looking at a low end of $3,000-$15,000 per server per year.  50,000 is probably very high.  I have absolutely no idea how many servers they have though.

I am not trying to say that the maintenance costs make up the Live sub cost.  I am merely saying they are not trivial.  Sure they are making a profit on subscriptions, but they would otherwise be eating millions of dollars in maintenance and development costs.  Some business models take the hit, others don't.

EDIT: Also, that 20 million might be a little high.  Also, MS does not bring in $50 per sub.  Probably around $30-$35 is what they charge retailers, possibly less.

I didn't realize Xbox live was developed without cost and wasnt' hosted on servers. Or wait no... that is what you're paying for. Sony chooses to offer it for free. And anyone who saved that money is just not getting availability to netflix and cross game chat. and recently began having multiplayer reliability on par with the 360. These are things I, and more than a dozen of my friends have used for a while. The online offerings of PSN have pretty much caught up recently, but those who stick with Xbox live are effectively paying an "early adopter" fee. We've had it all for years longer, and yes, we paid more for it.

As for Netflix, yes, the PS3 has it, but it requires a disc in the machine for use, and, I believe it also can't use MS's silverlight streaming technology (it's made a big, positive difference since it was implemented, IMO). But it's one of the areas Live keeps a leg-up.

UK 360 owners don't get BBC iPlayer because BBC and M$ are having arguements over the fact M$ want to put it on the gold service, therefore essentially making a person who has already paid for iPlayer service once, pay for it again on their 360. It's free to everyone else who has a PC, iPhone, (decent) Mobile, Wii and PS3 (oh and has paid their licence fee of course)


@Jereel Hunter
We in Europe don't get Netflix (or last I checked anyway).

A low end of $3,000-$15,000 per server in running costs? That's ridiculous.

And yes, my estimates are just ballparks. But a ballpark number is all that you need to realize that Microsoft could well run dedicated servers and still make a profit off Xbox Live.

Didn't my post at least make you suspect that this idea is correct?

I fully agree with you, however on the point of it stopping sales and affecting microsoft I doubt that it actually does that. Console players DO have simpler and lower expectations and as far as they know LIVE is worth every dime. I've been saying that forever now.

I remember when I first saw LIVE come out I was intrigued, then I heard it charged for multiplayer and I honestly couldn't stop laughing my ass off. Recently my mom wanted to buy my brother a 360 and she didn't know about the LIVE fee, I told her, SHE laughed her ass off. My brother did too when I told him.

Now to my point, I think the problem is that people just don't know any better so they honestly don't mind bending over and taking the MS stick fully and happily. The PS3's service is quite similar (at least from a PC-player point o view) and it is free, so there must be something else. Also you forgot that yes the console also does indeed cost 100 less, but also doesn't have a BluRay player, so if you evaluate that at a measly 50 that means just buying a 360 and signing up for LIVE, you might as well have bought a PS3.

However why don't people just by PS3's? Because corporations spend millions on sociology and psychology to advertise and market and make sure all their customers are ignorant and uneducated, then they are willing to buy anything. I think that is what we're seeing here (also true with people buying crappy games non-stop, but that's a different topic).


@Jereel
LIVE offers what Steam offers in terms of gaming with maybe a few bells and whistles and absolutely infinitely more content through my web browser. MMO games are actually games supporting THOUSANDS of player at the same time interacting, imagine a Halo where you have 200 people on a single huge map and everything done is handled by servers.

@Jagged

Steam does the whole "millions of players online and installing/searching for games" already for free. Magically LIVE doesn't. Explain how.

Thats not copying though. When the rumors started it was originlly started with gaming consoles. Juts because MSFT locked in exclusivity by paying netflix (netflix surely didnt do this out of good will) i dont think you can call it "copying".

As for the LIVE comment. I think its a part of why we will see decreased sales. The problem though is Its not dependantly up to MSFT whether or not it effects the company, its more up to sony. I dont know how many friends families, or uninformed friends or their siblings have bought a 360 and then realized they needed a wi fi dongle, Live or a harddrive.

LIVE is a part of it, but i really think people arent aware of all the costs that come with the console that they can get for free with the PS3. The amount this effects sales is up to Sony, and their recent marketing campaign has been able to shine a light on it to some extent. I think theres a huge upside to displaying the difference here to make people aware.

Once people invest $200 or so in the console for xmas or whatever they can justify buying the dongle, hard drive or live since they just spent so much money on the gift, the only way it effects sales is to educate the consumer before they make the purchase on what all it entails, this is up to Sony, not MSFT.

No, you are wrong.  It has a server list for each game that it provides, and most of the time the game itself provides the list.  It basically just launches and validates games.  Other than that there are no code level features that Steam provides developers.  Steam itself does not provide servers for any games other than possibly Valve ones.  Even then, the number of people playing at the same time is absolutely paltry compared to Live. CoD MW2 on Steam and Counter Strike, the two most popular games on Steam as of now, are currently having peak concurrent players at around 90k per day, and even less the day CoD came out.  Live had 2 MILLION CoD4 MW2 players playing concurrently the day it came out.  Steam is a great source of digital distribution, but as a gaming portal, it is just that, a portal.  It provides developers and customers no ubiqutous services between games.  It might have some hacked get around for friends lists and such, but it cannot provide the platform level of features that Live has.

It doesn't provide PC developers with a ubiqutous method for providing online play functionality.  It provides customers an easy way to browse server lists and download games.