Scooter said:
Like I said you're making excuses to feel better for getting ripped off. "If Sony had a service half as good as Live"? Are you serious? I can talk to to my teammates and invite them in all the latest AAA games. Cross-talk is a nice extra feature but it's not worth 60 dollars and doesn't make the service twice as good. You haven't even explained why Live is twice as good or why it has better ease of use, you're just talking out of your ass without even supporting what you say.
That's the kind of cognitive dissonance I'd expect from people who pay money for P2P gaming while I still play many games with dedicated servers on PSN for free.
I didn't say it was twice as good - I said when Sony launched PSN it wasn't half as good... I also said it made strides and has caught up... There is a clear difference between what PSN was when XBL was first launched and charging, and where it is now. I don't doubt that PSN is a good service, especially given the price... but most XBL subscribers would agree that it's a superior service to PSN and as such the nominal fee is a non-issue.
I am not making excuses for anything... I have and use both networks, and the XBL is always,
always a better experience, whether it be the finding/downloading content, communicating/playing with friends or just the overall seamless integration between all the elements. You might not agree, and I'm not going to get into a feature-list post to try and compare the two and justify what I am paying for. Also I'm not sure where you're getting the dedicated server bullshit - but from what I've experienced/read there are few games with dedicated servers on either PSN or XBL. Furthermore, as I said before, it's easy to criticize if you simply look at it as a P2P multiplayer fee... but the cross-game chat, better design and ease of parties/invites/chat features etc is worth it to me, and clearly many others.
jonnybryce said:
What? Buying things is super easy on PSN, even easier than 360 because it's actual money and not the points system made to mislead and confuse you. This thread is derailing majorly but there really isn't this huge difference in quality imo.
I don't think it's Sony thinking PSN isn't good enough to charge for, it's them wanting to keep that advantage and selling point.
It's not the 'purchasing' that is difficult, of course that's easy - it's navigating the menus, accessing demo's/trials (every XBLA game has a trial) and finding deals/discounts. It's not downright awful, and realistically not that much worse than XBL... but I find XBL a better experience - one that makes the monthly fee easier to swallow.
corkscrewblow said:
The fuck is this? :lol
It's more around 75% have mics from what I've seen. Doesn't matter, I instantly mute everyone that I'm not in a party with. People are loud and annoying.
That's fine, you experienced a different number of mic users... it's not unrealistic to expect differences between two users with regards to team communication. I live in Australia and (assuming you don't) likely play at different times, with different people on different games... and I find that a good 95% of users do not have, or do not use a mic when playing.
On a side note - I think that what makes this more difficult for Sony, and conversely, easier for Microsoft - is the fact that a significant portion of XBL subscribers are paying to play with friends, friends who don't necessarily renew at the same time of the year, and therefore are renewing/running-out of subscription time at different instances annually. The point being that one friend is forced to renew to keep playing games with another friends, who has to renew a little later etc etc. At some point it becomes a strong members club - where exclusion or refusal to resubscribe is detrimental to the social element online. Of course, no-one is forced to pay - but it becomes exponentially more difficult for Sony to 'win' XBL/Xbox users no matter how much the service improves.
lol)) To me, no demos on DD-only stuff generally equals a digital consumer-unfriendly shopping experience. I'm pretty sure that XBL sales dwarf PSN ones even despite the WW userbase totals being relatively close...and that's with half or more Live users being Gold subscribers. That says, to me, that people are clearly more willing to pay for something they value and continue to do so in the face of free options that are, IMO, lesser services. I'm not sure why anyone would defend PSN's lack of demos or, really, consistency in features. I want to have comfort of reliability in my online console interaction, not a crap shoot...which is what PSN feels like. And I'm willing to part with ~$45 a year to have that comfort.
