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In the long run, how can MS justify charging $50/year for online when Wii/PS3 don't?
- Thread starter MiketheBSG
- Start date
The Faceless Master
Member
this reply makes me wonder... have you ever used Xbox Live?B-Ri said:
it's like i said something about a cheeseburger and you gave me a can of spam.
i mean they're both edible..
B-Ri said:too bad its ultimately the same service, minus messaging in game and direct friend list to join online, which Home fixes, which will continue beign for free
If I'm playing Calling all Cars, can you start a conversation with me and ask if I want to play Resistance? Can I pause CaC and take a look to see what you are playing? Can I accept an invite to play Call of Duty 4 while I'm playing Heavenly Sword? Can I play MGS4, and discuss with you how to get past a certain part while you are playing MGS4? Can I simply start my PS3, see that you are playing Resistance, and then hop into your match/lobby?
There's playing games online...and then there's playing them over Live. I can agree with the criticisms of P2P...but to think that it is nothing more than marginally better than PSN or Wii Connect...that's ridiculous. It's so much more fluid, easy, social, and convenient...whether that convenience is worth $4 is an understandable argument...but I can't believe you'd actually imply that Live is only marginally better than PSN as far as these sorts of features go.
I agree, Home is a great addition and will take some of these advantages away from MS, and I'm hoping that in one way, Home will one-up Live in the sense that it can be used as a perpetual Party system that goes across all games. But until we see how things are implemented, there is no pressure on MS to change anything.
I was hoping that PSN, in its current state, would have been far more advanced than it is now. I was hoping that you would be able to see friends lists from any game, and now after the updates it seems like a feature that is included with only some games, as it is developer dependent, rather than a standard feature. And this is why I have to be somewhat skeptical of Home...though in reality I have high hopes for it.
RiskyChris
Banned
Jacobi said:
Why? I'm certainly getting vast, vast more enjoyment out of this $50 than I would spending it on just about anything else.
Sure, it would be nice to be free, but I have no gripes about paying for a good service.
The Faceless Master
Member
it's not that i like paying $50, every time that time of the year comes around i say to myself "why can't another console manufacturer match this feature set for free?"Jacobi said:
this november will make 5 years of me asking that question.
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
Jacobi said:
I agree.
The Faceless Master said:
i was just playing gears of war.
yes a universal friends list, i know what it is. Games like resistance dont have it, but games like motorstorm now do where all your friends are displayed from your XMB friends list. First party games were patched to do this and the info to throw it into games is out for developers now too, even RR7 has it.
MEssage on XBL? press big X and read it, same thing is coming for the PS3, sony already said in game XMB on its way like i had already stated. Cross game voice chat? not that i know of for PS3 yet. Voice messages? i sure hope so soon enough.
Home also lets you launch games from within home and go right back to home, its seperate entity that can take on the entire systems entity if you choose it.
MaX_PL said:
Actually on the pc version of live you can filter out either/ or , or u can search for both
for xbox 360 let the gold members have acess to both and silver only to peer to peer.
This will allow everyone to play with their friends but would still give the gold members a reason to buy the gold member ship and also nag their friends into getting it also .
I don't use Xbox Live because I don't believe it's worth it
#I don't pay for live because I think the community is pretty bad.
#I don't like how Microsoft rip people off with the accessories with the 360(A DS has an in-built Wi-fi adaptor yet I have to spend £60 with the 360).
#The whole P2P vs. dedicated servers
#Most of all,I don't think it is worth the money,I don't think in the month of using live that I ever could think that the subscription fee is justified you can get the exact same experience on the PC and without the complete arses that come exclusively with Xbox Live.
Till they get rid of the subscription fee I'll stick to online with my DS/Wii/PC,yes I might miss out on some Halo 3 online goodness but I don't agree with the service so I'm not paying for it(local multiplayer is better anyway)
#I don't pay for live because I think the community is pretty bad.
#I don't like how Microsoft rip people off with the accessories with the 360(A DS has an in-built Wi-fi adaptor yet I have to spend £60 with the 360).
#The whole P2P vs. dedicated servers
#Most of all,I don't think it is worth the money,I don't think in the month of using live that I ever could think that the subscription fee is justified you can get the exact same experience on the PC and without the complete arses that come exclusively with Xbox Live.
Till they get rid of the subscription fee I'll stick to online with my DS/Wii/PC,yes I might miss out on some Halo 3 online goodness but I don't agree with the service so I'm not paying for it(local multiplayer is better anyway)
Karma Kramer
Banned
I wonder what the total revenue has been for Xbox Live? I remember when it launched it cost like 2 billion dollars or something...
The Faceless Master
Member
it seems that you aren't quite understanding the "universal" part of the word "universal"B-Ri said:
and "coming soon" will matter when it gets here and not a second more
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
domlolz said:
Oh spare me the bullshit. You're on the internet. There's no such thing as arse-exclusivity.
domlolz said:
Please
I don't get why you think ms ripps people off or are the only ones. You know the xbox 360 premium comes with high def cables and the ps3 doesn't. Do you protest the ps3 becasue they are ripping people off by not giving you something the cheaper console gives ?
The Faceless Master said:
and it seems like you dont understand that these games were before PSN was starting to become standardized. Your going to blame a launch game because it doesnt have universal friends list very few games had at the time?
I mean if Socom Confrontation doesnt use XMB friends list then sure you can shit all over it, because many games have done it, but you cant blame the launch game for going out on an unfinished online network. PSN is still in identity crisis and home is seeking to fix it all.
were all not blind fanboys, just read and stop trying to treat me like one.
RiskyChris
Banned
domlolz said:
You can get the same experience on PC? A unified profile to take across all games (Steam is almost there!), with practically a guarantee that everyone will have a mic if you want to teamspeak?
Really?
RiskyChris
Banned
B-Ri said:
GFW is supposed to get us there, but it will never happen. The PC is too open as a platform -- Steam already has enough clout to just give the finger to GfW, same goes for Blizzard.
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
Honestly guys you're talking to a brick wall...okay multiple brick walls.
Give it up.
Give it up.
The Faceless Master
Member
launch games a year before on another console had it, so yes i'm shitting on games that arrived a year late and a few bullet points short.B-Ri said:
why is everything always about waiting for X game or Y update when shit like that was standard 2 years ago?
B-Ri said:
What I'm hearing from you is that the most popular title out for the system is not part of the universal friends list .
How can you claim that its universal.
here is my other question for you. If you were playing motorstorm and I was playing something else , can i invite you to my online game and it would prompt u in motor storm and let u select the invite , bring you to the dash so you can insert the disc and then take you right to my game ?
Also with home wont the load times of loading up home to get a party together and then loading up the game be a bit of a drag ?>
Karma Kramer
Banned
Snah said:
Sorry I was wrong...
It was 1 Billion.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=technology&res=9f04e5d81438f933a15756c0a9649c8b63
Microsoft's $1 Billion Bet on Xbox Network
By JOHN MARKOFF
May 20, 2002
It was nearly a decade ago that a young Microsoft programmer named J. Allard sounded the alarm and convinced Bill Gates that the Internet was a threat to the dominance of the Microsoft Windows operating system.
On Monday, Microsoft will announce Mr. Allard's next big gamble: an ambitious billion-dollar-plus investment in an online game service to be called Xbox Live.
Microsoft hopes to create what it describes as the equivalent of an online Disneyland, globally accessible over the Internet, where gamers who subscribe can find partners for dozens of different adventure, racing and sports games.
The company is betting the service will save its Xbox video-game system, which began shipping last November but still lags far behind the industry-leading Sony PlayStation 2, which has nearly 30 million units in use worldwide, compared with only 3.5 million for the Xbox. (There are an estimated four million to five million Nintendo GameCube consoles now in use.)
While Sony and Nintendo have online plans, networked game playing is peripheral to their video-game strategies. For Microsoft, it has been integral to the Xbox plan from the beginning -- the wedge with which Microsoft hopes to gain entry to the nation's and world's living rooms and become an entertainment powerhouse.
It is a bet as ambitious as it is expensive. When Microsoft opens the electronic doors for its service this summer, the Internet technology in its three data centers in London, Seattle and Tokyo will have more capacity than its own Microsoft.com, which itself is one of the world's largest Web sites. The risk is that Microsoft is entering a quagmire that will soak up vast amounts of investment and lock the company in a bitter, potentially unwinnable battle with Sony and Nintendo, which will each be describing their own online services at this week's game industry convention, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, which starts Wednesday in Los Angeles.
For Xbox Live to become a success the company acknowledges that it will have to attract millions of customers willing to pay $50 or more for each game's software and perhaps a $9.95 monthly subscription, in addition to the $40 to $60 a month for the high-speed Internet connection the service will require.
Those are big if's, because while video games have become a wildly popular form of home entertainment, online game playing -- so far mainly employing personal computers, not game consoles -- has never appealed to more than a fraction of Internet users, and in almost all cases, only when it is free.
Even more daunting is the fact that there is little evidence that video games have expanded much beyond their core audience of adolescent and college-age males.
''Gaming is a very age-specific and demographic-specific device and experience,'' said Mitchell Kertzmann, the chief executive office of Liberate Technologies, an interactive television equipment supplier based in San Carlos, Calif.
There have already been well-publicized failures in the online gaming business. During the Internet bubble, start-ups like Total Entertainment Network and MPATH rose and fell on the promise of offering Web game portals for paying PC customers. And Sega, the one video-game company that did start an online service, Sega.net, way back in 2000, has dropped that service and no longer even makes game consoles, now focusing instead on software.
''It only works when you get to significantly high numbers of subscribers,'' said Lawrence Probst, chairman and chief executive officer of Electronic Arts, the largest maker of computer and video-game software. ''We've learned that the hard way with EA.com,'' he said, referring to the company's online computer-game service, whose only profitable component is the medieval-themed Ultima Online, which has about 200,000 subscribers.
Another challenge may arise in household geography. In most homes, the video-game console is located in the living room, where the television set is -- nowhere near the high-speed Internet connection in the den. That assumes, of course that the den has a high-speed connection.
Microsoft asserts that as many as half of its Xbox customers already have high-speed, or broadband, Internet connections. But so far only 12 percent of the nation's households have broadband Internet, according to Odyssey, a market research firm in San Francisco, and the number is growing only slowly.
..
''If I were Microsoft, I would spend my money first on selling units rather than building an online service,'' said Kazuo Hirai, the president and chief operating officer of Sony Computer Entertainment America.
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
Gadzooks I'm a bigger sheep than I thought.
Firewire said:
The difference is Xbox Live gamers don't need to log on a message board to find friends. Mics come standard with most systems. People use their mic on live. Once you play a game with someone you get along with and is cool you send him a friend request. From that day forward you know exactly what game your buddy's playing at anytime, you can chat with them between games or send them a invite directly into the sever your playing in (whether it's your server or not).
Thats a bit different than playing a game of resestinace with 50 people when 45 of them don't have a blue tooth headset. Not very user friendly to have to join a message board to find gaming friends don't you think?
That's the one area MS got right. It was live and the sense of community. It's why the attach rate is insane for Xbox 360. It's not because 360 owners are rich, it's because 360's owners have groups of friends, and to continue playing with your group of friends you all need to go out and buy the latest online games.
RiskyChris said:
thats what i love is the openess of PC.
One thing id LOVE is if i was able to get a steering wheel that would fully work on both my 360 and ps3: FF, Rumble, and ALL. Funny thting is this time microsofts the one that went overly proprietary on the controllers and sony went to a standard.
Bizzaro world confirmed :X
Rotten Markhor
Member
I think the reason they had those free Live Weeks/Weekends last year was that they were trying to mete out how many extra Live users there would be if not for the subscription fee.
I guess the number wasn't very high.
I guess the number wasn't very high.
RiskyChris
Banned
Shamrock said:
This makes me sadder than almost anything else this generation. Mics should come standard in consoles of the future.
Shamrock said:
not that its NOT a great move to have mics come with every system, but honestly, 90% of the people on live shouldnt have mics.
"n word" this "f your mother" that. For more then one match a day id like to hear somebody say "hey theyve camped at this sniper point, take the left side and when i say go lets charge"
Although it's far from perfect, Xbox Live is the best online service by far on the consoles.
Both of MS's competitors are far behind in the online area and still lacking some features that XBL had five years ago (such as cross-game invites & messaging and voice chat as standard). MS did things properly the first time around and thus they have a sizable head-start and will likely always be a step ahead of the competition.
Both of MS's competitors are far behind in the online area and still lacking some features that XBL had five years ago (such as cross-game invites & messaging and voice chat as standard). MS did things properly the first time around and thus they have a sizable head-start and will likely always be a step ahead of the competition.
Rotten Markhor said:
LOL I guess thats why HBO and Stars and what not give away the free weekends too . Just to see how many more people would watch if it was free LOL
They did it to give people a taste of what they are missing and see if they could convert those users .
Expect another round of that when Halo 3 comes out
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
B-Ri when are you going to leave it alone? These people are convinced that Xboxlive is worth the money and there's nothing you can do about it.
It's okay.....really...
JoJo13: ....Nevermind. I understand your points but your delivery needs work. I'll just tune you out for now.
It's okay.....really...
JoJo13: ....Nevermind. I understand your points but your delivery needs work. I'll just tune you out for now.
B-Ri said:
the only place i hear this crap is on this forum. i hardly ever hear little kids cussing, and with the new system used in Halo 3, you dont have to hear anyone besides the people in your party.
and nearly everyone of my games consists of "hey theyve camped at this sniper point, take the left side and when i say go lets charge".
no joke, its the difference between competitve play and casual play.
RiskyChris
Banned
PepsimanVsJoe said:
To get perspective can I ask if you find it crazy or nonsensical for people to consider XBL worth the money?
PepsimanVsJoe said:
Oh well ive never said it wasnt worth the money. Well yes and no, the online system works and fuctions well witht he console, but my biggest concern is the P2P play. Im paying to use my bandwidth to host matches for their games. Wtf mate? Host advantage is an argued myth, but matches on gears will prove otherwise. P2P with dedicated and ill bite $50 a year.
PSN allows UTIII mods out of the gate, yay. \o/
Is cross game invite the only feature people can come up with?
If Home allows you to do cross game clan gaming would that appeal to you more?
I think if someone messages you while playing a game, you get a icon saying you've got a message so PSN is halfway there already.
Is cross game invite the only feature people can come up with?
If Home allows you to do cross game clan gaming would that appeal to you more?
I think if someone messages you while playing a game, you get a icon saying you've got a message so PSN is halfway there already.
Karma Kramer
Banned
JoJo13 said:
PR bullshit? If anything at the time saying this was bad PR...because most thought Microsoft was throwing that 1 billion dollars down the tube... which made the investors unhappy.
Looking at your post history is like looking through the eyes of Jack Tretton.
Being Jack Tretton.
RiskyChris
Banned
B-Ri said:
To be fair, Gears is a favorable choice for opponents of XBL p2p. Halo 3 Beta played almost flawlessly in comparison.
Steroyd said:
No, perhaps you should read the thread.
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
RiskyChris said:
I really don't think serious responses belong in these kind of threads anymore. It's just the same thing over and over, unanswered questions, bitching, fruitless endeavors. Why bother? I say live wild and free.
EDIT: Although I will admit getting demos on a regular basis actually almost sort of makes the $50 worth it.
RiskyChris said:
host advantage comes and goes, and yes epic and good netcode so far dont mix, but im not purposefully using gears to prove P2P as horrific, its just the only game i play regularly on XBL. Halos may be great, but continuing on the topic of universiality, why not have microsoft get some universal match making going instead of having developers do it and having such huge differences as halo and gears?
Like i said my main gripe is i "pay to host my bandwidth for their games"
Mix em both and youll never hear a peep out of me about $50 a year, but otherwise ill post my opinion. Funny thing is is a lot of you think im out on a "burn XBL to the ground" blah blah blah BS. The warhawk avatar must be throwing you all off and throwing me into troll stereotypes.
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