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[Freddo]

Because people are willing to pay for it, as Microsoft shown us.

I don't pay for it though, my PS4 is pretty much only used for single player games. Infact, it's free to play with the PS4 this weekend for non-PS+ users, and I have no game I want to try it with.

If I want to play a multiplayer game I do so on the PC. Or better yet, together with someone on the couch in the same room.

 

[Mexen]

10/10 Too much money - IGN

 

[ShadowFox08]

To be fair

-developing games are astronomically high, but when adjusting for inflation--its the best time to be a consumer. It's cheaper now then it was back 20 years ago. Much cheaper.
-There are some perks.. Like dedicated servers.. Also xbox live and PSN+ gives you free games

Nintendo's online subscription service is just lol though..

 

[Bluth54]

A fee for online isn't necessary but I'm sure they generate a good profit for Sony and Microsoft and they'll keep charging for it as long as console gamers keep playing.

Not preowned ones.

Valve doesn't make any money on any Steam keys activated on Steam and yet somehow they're still able to provide Steamworks features for all games.

 

[Harmondale]

Was playing the whole evening yesterday because of the free MP event

Had a blast! too bad its behind a pay wall. I vote with my wallet

 

[Psxphile]

What's all this "we" stuff, they just want the rabbit.

 

[StayDead]

It's mainly because people were willing to bend over backwards and accept Xbox live thinking that they were getting a great deal for some reason when they wasn't.

Then the other companies hopped on.

 

[Malcolm9]

It's £3.25 a month, if I play football or go swimming it's £5 for each session.

£3.25........

I get far more than that back via subscription games, discounts and playing with mates online.

 

[Melchiah]

I've been paying for monthly games, automatic updates, backup saves, discounts, and betas ever since 2012. I've never paid the fee just to play online.

 

[bitbydeath]

If it was just for multiplayer I wouldn't pay.

 

[swit]

I don't and I won't.

Is all of this really just a huge scam? I'm genuinely curious. I really want to know where the money I've paid Sony to play Bloodborne online is going.

it's a scam

 

[fuzzylogic]

I mean infrastructure costs money, yes, but that doesn't mean that they have to charge for it. Fast food restaurants don't charge for napkins or ketchup, but those cost money. You could argue the profit for the sale of the games itself could easily cover the online infrastructure costs.

I think the truth is we don't have enough information to answer this question. However, I would bet on the fact they could easily absorb the costs of their online infrastructures without a separate charge, but do it anyway because easy extra money is a great idea, Microsoft! Corporate high five!

To really answer this question you'd probably need to be an accountant at a major publisher. You'd need to see and analyze their budget for yourself.

 

[Luigiv]

If I could sell people air, I totally would.

Sounds like you should get into the scuba industry.

 

[Jumeira]

I'm not paying for PSN, only XBL. I go with the better eco system, much prefer X1 as it's an extension and enhancement of 360. Plus BC online and all my 3rd party gaming is done there.

 

[professor denim]

Considering the PS4 / XO are closed systems and are pulling their weight against beefier PC's, I honestly don't mind paying £3.50 a month to play online. All the added community, voice chat, party, game saves, free games, etc are fine for that amount of cash. It's all relative obviously so for me it provides plenty of value as I regularly play online.

My take as well.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

A fool and his money are easily parted.

I refuse to pay a dime for online.

 

[Kareha]

People were stupid enough to actually let it happen.

 

[JesseEwiak]

Because people decided it was worth the value, no matter how much that fact upsets PC players.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

At least I get free games. I mean it could be worse.

Oh wait, that's Nintendo's online service. Yikes.

 

[Cranster]

essentially this.
Had Xbox Live not been a thing millions paid for I doubt the rest would have followed suit.

And perhaps if Sony followed suit sooner then they wouldn't have had to shut down PSN for nearly a month last gen as they could have afforded better security measures?

 

[TheRedSnifit]

To be fair

-developing games are astronomically high, but when adjusting for inflation--its the best time to be a consumer. It's cheaper now then it was back 20 years ago. Much cheaper.

None of your subscription money goes to third parties.

-There are some perks.. Like dedicated servers.. Also xbox live and PSN+ gives you free games

Sony exclusives such as Uncharted 4 do not have dedicated servers. Microsoft games do have dedicated servers, but over the exact same network they provide PC players for free. In both cases, none of your money goes towards the dedicated servers for Battlefield 1 or whatever.

The value of PS+ "free" games has demonstrably gone down after they introduced paid online, to the point where most of the "free" games are dirt-cheap and likely not worth $60 a year. If you give me $60 and ask me to buy you six games of my choosing per month on Steam, I can easily cover that and probably make a profit. Hell, a single sale could probably cover the entire thing.

Nintendo's online subscription service is just lol though..

Not anymore lol than the others.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

And perhaps if Sony followed suit sooner then they wouldn't have had to shut down PSN for nearly a month last gen as they could have afforded better security measures?

Sony couldn't afford it, huh.

Wonder where all that Plus money's going.

 

[Cranster]

Sony couldn't afford it, huh.

Wonder where all that Plus money's going.

I highly doubt Plus subscribers at that time were a huge majority of active PSN users.

 

[Nastrodamous]

Does sony still only offer 1gb for cloud saves?

 

[OmegaTreeFish]

The main asnwer is simply because people will pay it.

However its hardly hard to justify when you look at the service as a whole rather than just "pay to play online". At least for PSN.

£40 a year (£3.33 a month) nets me:
2-6 games a month
cloud save storage
additional discounts
online play
plus other small perks.

The first 2 do cost money to arrange and maintain, the first and third gets me my money back and then some and the third im cool with because I get my value from the service (I had this service when all I owned was a vita which has free online).

If all you did was play multiplayer games, never play the plus games, never use psplus discounts etc then sure, maybe the service seems unfair. But thats because you are cherry picking the part of the service and applying its whole value to your situation.

TLDR: The PS+ Service as a whole is great value to me and I save more money than I spend on it.

 

[Joelstinton14]

Think some of you are being a tad unfair. I know it is easy to hate, but they are supplying a service, concurrently, spread across different machines to tens of millions of customers for their online service.

I don't know the ins and outs of online infrastructure, but i would imagine a lot of money is needed to invest in that service, improving it, security against daily attempts at its system, development of new features, paying staff etc. There is a cost. But its all greed right?

 

[TheRedSnifit]

I highly doubt Plus subscribers at that time were a huge majority of active PSN users.

That's still a lot of money, yet not a cent could go towards having a semi-decent network.

I also wonder why Steam doesn't shut down for months at a time despite being free. Hmm.

 

[Cranster]

That's still a lot of money, yet not a cent could go towards having a semi-decent network.

I also wonder why Steam doesn't shut down for months at a time despite being free. Hmm.

And yet Microsoft hasn't had to shutdown Xbox Live nor had they have had security breaches such as Steam and PSN has had occur to them in the past.

 

[tzare]

Microsoft tried , people accepted and justified it and then the others came, sony first, nintendo second. That's it.
At least now we are getting some additional services like cloud storage or games.

The issue now is if you own more than one console this starts to be quite a lot of money every year.

 

[paradise_circus]

I always assumed there was a real reason that online subscription services existed on PS and MS - and soon Nintendo - consoles. Did they provide dedicated servers for their online games? Did they do something significantly different than online gaming on PC does that justifies the cost?

The PSN wasn't profitable in the PS3 era despite having larger revenues than X-Box live.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverc...les-top-800m-still-unprofitable/#48c29c553996
It isn't simple business like many think there. The party chat and other share features of the PS4 are also need further server costs and maintenance. However, Sony shouldn't charge for the online mode of multiplayer games but for the service like partychat.

 

[Gravy Boat]

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND PEOPLE SOMETIMES!....

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/02/21/kiss-air-guitar-strings/

KISS Making Millions Off of $3.99 ‘Air Guitar Strings’.

Bags of air. Everything is possible. Air has officially been sold. I'm done.

P.S. I know it's off topic but I just found it to be completely ridiculous.

It's a novelty gift, something you buy as a joke. It's not really that ridiculous.

 

[JustSomeone]

I don't

 

[duckroll]

I mean infrastructure costs money, yes, but that doesn't mean that they have to charge for it. Fast food restaurants don't charge for napkins or ketchup, but those cost money. You could argue the profit for the sale of the games itself could easily cover the online infrastructure costs.

How about charging for water?

 

[grizzelye]

It was funny in 2013 when Sony annouced that online play was now part of PS+.

Should have directed all that DRM rage, and stopped Sony from charging for online instead.

That would have been spectacular actually.

 

[Hamster Plugin]

I've been paying for monthly games, automatic updates, backup saves, discounts, and betas ever since 2012. I've never paid the fee just to play online.

I started in 2011 for the monthly games. But the value of the monthly games has now gone down the toilet because online play is now the main perk and Sony knows this.

They could stop giving monthly games entirely and the Plus subscriber count would barely drop at all, nobody cares about the garbage they're giving these days and just want to play online.

 

[test_account]

Why do people call it a scam? What exactly is being promised that isnt being delivered? Where is the deceiving part? (Which is the definition of a scam).

It's easy money for them and, well, we don't really have a choice if we want to play with our friends on console.

I've always heard nothing but good things regarding Xbox Live, but PSN is kind of a joke. You could still tell yourself you get "free" games every month and such but yeah, when you think about it, it feels scammy (for PSN at least).

Then you have only picked up the negative comments. Whats your own experience with it?

Theres no need to tell yourself about the "free" games, a lot of people payed for PS+ when online play wasnt a part of PS+ as well. PS+ has been around since 2010. It was not until late 2013 that online play for PS4 was added behind PS+, online play for PS3 and Vita is still free. The service is the same today as it was ~7 years ago, only difference is that PS4 doesnt have free online multiplayer (except for MMO and F2P games). And sure, many newcomers subscribe to PS+ mainly because of online play, but for many others, this doesnt matter because they subscribed to the service even before this.

 

[Melchiah]

The value of PS+ "free" games has demonstrably gone down after they introduced paid online, to the point where most of the "free" games are dirt-cheap and likely not worth $60 a year. If you give me $60 and ask me to buy you six games of my choosing per month on Steam, I can easily cover that and probably make a profit. Hell, a single sale could probably cover the entire thing.

Looking at the list of last year's games, I find that hard to believe.

I started in 2011 for the monthly games. But the value of the monthly games has now gone down the toilet because online play is now the main perk and Sony knows this.

They could stop giving monthly games entirely and the Plus subscriber count would barely drop at all, nobody cares about the garbage they're giving these days and just want to play online.

I don't think the indies are any worse, than the old retail games the PS3 offered. That being said, there hasn't been that much games to my taste lately, but there has been some good and interesting ones like This War of Mine: The Little Ones, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Resident Evil, Lords of the Fallen, Journey, Gone Home, Siren: Blood Curse, and Zombi. And during the three months after the PS4 launch it gave me Resogun and Outlast.

As for the online experience, it's definitely been better when I compare something like Mass Effect 3 multiplayer and Destiny, but whether that has anything to do with paid online service is a different matter.


EDIT: The thing is, since there's more games to my fancy continuously coming out, I have less time to play the PS+ games than I had on the PS3. That's why most of the monthly games have started to go to my backlog by default, since games I've bought come first.

 

[test_account]

If I could sell people air, I totally would.

You can, just start a scuba diving company or an oxygen bar Air is being sold there every day.