• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Xbox 360 Multiplayer Should be FREE...

thelastword

Banned
Bad PR doesn't mean t makes good business sense to throw away money. As mentioned here already, there are several places where 13 months of live costs $40.

Either you haven't done the math or you're debating from a point of pure self interest.
I'm not even that big on multiplayer, but I do play sf regularly online. It's nice when you can purchase a game and not worry about doing a bevy of things online when it's most active or before your sub runs out. On the 360 you pay for live but there's no guarantee that if you buy a game that's been out for a few you will even get persons to play with. It's the same scenario as a ps3 owner purchasing that very game only without a further gamble placed on their money.

To be honest, finding live for cheap is not the point, though I would like you to link me to 13 months of live @40 just for show, (several places at that). I'm just saying that 360 multiplayer doesn't offer anything special over the competition, so why the markup, it doesn't guarantee that you will get persons to play with or that your experience will be that much better, it's a gamble just like the free service from the competition.
 

Zil33184

Member
You really believe so, then why aren't PS3/PS4 owners cancelling their plus subscriptions due to free multiplayer on the PS3?
Short answer: because Playstation Plus != Xbox Live Gold and on PS4 it's mandatory.

We'll see if Microsoft can get Games with Gold on equal footing with Instant Game Collection, but with Cross Buy and Cross Play, Plus is still the better of the two. Sony's ecosystem encourages Plus subscribers to buy more Sony devices, and those with several Sony devices are encouraged to subscribe or renew PS+. There's also the fact that PS4 is probably going to take the top stop this gen and sell a lot of subscriptions. A 360 owner that's looking to jump to PS4 probably won't be renewing their gold subscription just for 2 free games a month.
 
Sounds like PS3 and Vita are perfect for you.

And PC.

Paying for online multi is a little absurd. But in the long run if I'm getting PS+ games and Games with Gold and the money is obviously recirculated into making the online run smoother, I don't really mind it too much.
 

Malcolm9

Member
It's cheap anyway, how many of us blow that and more on a night out.

They won't make it free, it makes them money and that goes towards making the service better overall.
 

Sundown

Banned
Would make no sense whatsoever. XBL is very profitable, and dropping the fee would only be an incentive not to step over to next gen.
 

Felensis

Banned
Is anyone realizing that it's not only just M$, but XBL consists of a HUGE farm of 300.000 servers which most probably costs them a lot of money for operating and maintenance?
5 or 6 bucks a month or the eBay deals for 35$ a year is not that much to afford...
 

JamiieCarter

Neo Member
I really don't mind paying £24.00/$38.00 a year to pay for and support a service I really love using.

Maybe it's just me, but I honestly don't see a problem with the pricetag.
 

mike4001_

Member
Regardless of all the "Greedy MS" posts.

Xbox Live DOES cost MS money !

Not saying they are not earning their fair share with xbox live gold, but isn´t free for them either way !
 
Yeah, because no other system has free multiplayer, such a farfetched concept am I right? Of course MS will be leaving money on the table if they do, but for the age of the console it would be a nice incentive after all the bad PR they've suffered recently. In business, what's so wrong about giving something back to amass more in the longrun, that may very well be goodwill, but at least a potential XBONE owner may say "hey MS is not totally anti-consumer afterall" and please bare in mind that the competition does offer free multiplayer in comparison.

For the person who mentioned that there's an install base of 80 million 360's, how many of those 80 million consoles are even plugged in, how many are subbed to live? The figure sounds nice, but so many 360 owners have also moved on due to the new generation, quite a few to the PS4 as well. Xblive as a business plan made bank for Microsoft last gen, but I don't see 360 only owners keeping their subs running just to play the odd multiplayer session on that console.

No other console has had a free system that's even 1 tenth as intuitive, complex, feature rich, and refined as even the most simple/worst/ugliest iteration of XBL has been since the day the 360 launched. It's not only been the "best" option, it makes every other online service, especially the ones provided by Nintendo and Sony, look like the people working on them were working on their very first interface projects.

Personally, I would gladly pay for a service that actually works than be handed something free that I have to rely on that can't be relied on.
 
Xbox has at least made its apps accessible to non-Gold members, and hopefully their free-to-play titles won't require it either, although some of the discretion is up to the publisher [not that there are a lot of F2P 360 games, but still].

People are willing to pay for it, and Sony learned from this, pushing PS+ as a requirement for the PS4 multiplayer. I WOULD complain about Gold for Xbox 360 multiplayer, but I like the connectivity features it gives me on the 360, we get 2 free games a month because of it, access to sales, and there are still a ton of people on the 360.

I treat Xbox Live and PS+ as a yearly utility bill. Especially since I get free games from both nowadays. I can certainly understand saving money, but I'm happy with spending it if i can feel the value.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
The Xbox one is out, if you want to play multiplayer on the new consoles then by all means the subscription service is a must, but why is it that paying for multiplayer still a thing on the 360?

At the time when MS announced that services like Netflix, youtube and hulu would be removed from the paywall, why couldn't they also remove multiplayer? At this point in the console's lifespan it would certainly bolster the experience for persons just adopting the console or cause persons to keep the 360 around for the occasional multiplayer session.

If MS were planning to price slash 360 down to $99 and really stretch the generation out, I'd tend to agree with you - you need to make the total cost of ownership not too high to get those last millions.

But I don't see the price of 360 (or PS3) dropping that much, they're simply too expensive to make with too many high priced items like HDDs. So I think they'll just continue on with a minor price drop, and then end of life them a litttle quicker than Sony did with PS2 - and hope to transition more people more quickly to the new consoles
 

Marvel

could never
All dat green.
idKRiHsuN48CN.gif
 

Synth

Member
My Xbox Gold just expired because I'm on PS4 now and entertainment apps are free. I may have kept it going solely for the apps and extremely occasional multiplayer but their loss I guess.

What did they lose here?

You may have kept around a console you had already paid for, so you could use their free services alongside the free multiplayer (which costs them money to provide) occasionally?

I don't think they're too worried about you here.
 

thelastword

Banned
People are willing to pay for it, and Sony learned from this, pushing PS+ as a requirement for the PS4 multiplayer. I WOULD complain about Gold for Xbox 360 multiplayer, but I like the connectivity features it gives me on the 360, we get 2 free games a month because of it, access to sales, and there are still a ton of people on the 360.
Let's not overcompensate live for what it provides though, this is a feature that was recently implemented, albeit at the end of the console's life cycle. MS's games with gold program stemmed from the better value that was/is a ps+ sub. It was not some concept shrouded in mystery that ps+ has been a better value for years, so ms getting onboard the games giving bandwagon was something they had to do to stay competitive in that space.

Further to that, many persons including myself complained about all these services being behind paywalls as preposterous, and finally, so many years later they've done that. Should I now fall prostrate at their feet because they've done this? no, because that's how it should have been in the first place, especially in light of the competition.

Point is I don't think it's fair to boost live's value factor on many trivial and miscellaneous bits; like access to sales? whatever does that mean? Sales for gold is really tame compared to the weekly sales on ps+ or the flash sales at that, even now there's a sale on and there is always an excess of titles on sale compared to the few that are on deals with gold.

With a cheaper msrp on plus, the competition offers better games across the vita, ps3 and ps4, that's more games on more devices, yet there has never been a paywall for services like netflix, neither has online on PS3 ever been priced. Some persons have highlighted that Ms has servers to maintain, but so does Sony for what is a p2p service across the board.
 
They should make it free and lower the quality for parity with psn.

Seriously though I like this concept. Think if netflix and spotify only charged for new content. Then I could watch 99% of what I want and not pay for it. I also have fiber optics now, so I think last gen cable and DSL Internet should be free so I can switch to that and pay nothing.
 

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
This doesn't make sense, they're making the majority of their XBLG money from 360. From MS's point of view it would make more sense for Xbone to be free, to drive adoption of the hardware and win some brownie points.
 

BradC00

Member
You never paid a cent for online on the PS3 and that's still up, do you believe PS3 online will shutdown before 360 online? There's no saying what MS will do here. For what it's worth, the xblive service is a p2p service just like the psn, it's not like the 360 had a multitude of dedicated server games in comparison.

Didn't GT5's MP get shutdown? Forza 1 still has matchmaking.
 

Freeman

Banned
You are 8 years late, people showed they are willing to pay for thing that "should" be free.

Gold paywall lasting for as long as it did shows that consumers can't bother making a point of something most of the time, they suck it up.

Can't really blame MS for thinking their DRM plans would work out, their reference were a base of consumers that accepted the most outrageous business model up to that point.
 

thelastword

Banned
If MS were planning to price slash 360 down to $99 and really stretch the generation out, I'd tend to agree with you - you need to make the total cost of ownership not too high to get those last millions.
Well, you get my angle. Imagine that you've waited for so long to get a 360, so you get one for maybe $150 - $99 and get many games on the cheap, for someone who've waited so long, certainly you're not made in money, but to get the full experience on the games you just bought you need to plop almost half of that on a sub just to play part of the games. That has to be a major bummer in light of the competition.

On the flipside, you look at the PS3 and you say, well. I can get it on the cheap, buy a couple of bargain bin games and red cases, and you are privy to full access to your games and not half of it, that's all you need to spend if money is tight really. Even if you flip this argument and say I'll just get a PS3 and buy a 1yr sub of plus, it's still a win win and may even be more beneficial to you as you for-go even buying games for it at all. That certainly can't be said about MS and it's games for gold offerings in comparison.

Marvel said:
All dat green.
They've gone back on many things for the xbox brand, they're offering games and they've removed the paywall in light of the competition, multiplayer gaming is the last divide for last gen consoles. Making all dat green is all and nice, but don't fool yourself, Ms reacting to the competition's advantages/offerings can only be as a result of them losing green, losing subs to the competition. People will always go where the value is better.
 

Tain

Member
On one hand yeah I'd like it to be free, on the other I spent some time playing AE on PC, then Ultra on PS3, then Ultra on 360 and 360's online play is the best by miiiiiiles. I never imagined the difference would be so massive. Much faster matchmaking, much less lag.

If it would be free, I'd prefer it to keep using MS infrastructure.
 

Subitai

Member
If they made it free on 360 people would complain that it isn't free on Xbone.
This. And, MS's setup is just leagues ahead.

Also, MS's support is better. Like they took down MAG servers for PS3. I can still play Halo Wars and Halo 3 though. For the people who use it a lot, like CoD only players who just log in a couple hours every night, but do it regularly, I don't see the problem.


Too many people want something for nothing these days. Put another way, what is good for you may not be good for everyone else.
 
The Gold Paywall isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Especially now that they're creating something akin to the Instant Games Collection. They want everyone to buy an XB1 but they're very aware that there is a huge market that will not purchase one until it is a budget system. These are the people who just purchased a 360 in like 2013 and beyond and it was their first console purchase of that era. Nothing you do will get them onto XB1 unless the price is $199 or less.

These people will get no kindness from MS or rather their kindness will be MS selling them a dirt cheap system and then selling them a service for $50 a year that gives them two games every month in hopes that they keep their $$$ in the MS system rather making Gamestop a ton of money on used sales, which is kinda how it worked in prior gens. If you're a dirt cheap gamer, it works out pretty well for you. PS+ as well, although the PS3 is still almost $300 so not so much.
 

thelastword

Banned
On one hand yeah I'd like it to be free, on the other I spent some time playing AE on PC, then Ultra on PS3, then Ultra on 360 and 360's online play is the best by miiiiiiles. I never imagined the difference would be so massive. Much faster matchmaking, much less lag.

If it would be free, I'd prefer it to keep using MS infrastructure.
So wouldn't that be a boon to MS and the 360 and especially those getting the system now on the cheap.

At least with the PS3, you'll say I'll keep it plugged in to play my ps backlog or to run a few rounds of multiplayer in cod or sf whenever I want, a couple months from now a year later. On the 360, a couple months later, you're like, let me play some rainbow six .....v...and you go "eff, i'm no longer subbed". That is the difference and the truth is many persons won't buy live to play that occasional game.

The question about lag on these services is really subjective, it has more to do with who you're playing as opposed to (xblive has less lag), it's the same p2p service. Also, anyone can make a US account on PSN and many persons do have US accounts who are not located in the USA, you may be paired with a US flag player and the lag will be just as bad as a playing a guy with a Japanese flag.

Further to that the 1 frame of input lag on the PS3 version is indeed real, I believe that it messes the situation in a laggy match even more, but that's on Capcom, not on the psn per se. I've stopped playing PC Ae, the steam version is abysmal, the gfwl version is like gold in comparison, not that it was too bad to begin with, but the gfwl overlay did cause some slowdown in and of itself.

I've had severe lag in back to back matches on 360 ultra, the waiting for player prompts is the worse idea I've seen implemented in an online fighter mid game, don't get me wrong I've had some really solid games on ultra too, but that's par for the course for both psn and xblive. PC sf at the moment needs some work and Ultra overall needs a patch to make the netcode better. How comes 2 3d fighters have better netcode than sf on PSN (sc5, tag2) and how does blazeblue do it as a 2d fighter with such exemplary code?
 

quickwhips

Member
No its actually pretty great but if you said PS4 should be free for multiplayer I would agree. Way to many disconnects there.
 
Top Bottom