Poll: Is Paying For Online Multiplayer On Xbox Live Fair?

[RhombusHatesYou]

That's kinda what I'm getting at, every unit is online functional except online play is restricted by the network. You get just about everything for free except the multi player which is built into every game. So on top of paying full price for a game, which include multi player, you have to pay for the right to play it.

... sorry, I was just thinking of when G4WL initially tried to make PC gamers pay for online play and fell off my chair laughing.


Thing is, they can get away with it and while enough 360 owners are willing to pony up the cash to make it worth their time keep doing it nothing is going to change. It's not like there's any alternative online services for them unless they want to switch platforms. It's one of the major drawbacks of the closed-garden networks that console manufacturers implement - they have a monopoly on things such as services and what to charge (if anything) for them.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

People shouldn't get the idea a network is impenetrable.

Anything connected to the internet is vulnerable.

 

[Waaghpowa]

That's kinda what I'm getting at, every unit is online functional except online play is restricted by the network. You get just about everything for free except the multi player which is built into every game. So on top of paying full price for a game, which include multi player, you have to pay for the right to play it.

... sorry, I was just thinking of when G4WL initially tried to make PC gamers pay for online play and fell off my chair laughing.


Thing is, they can get away with it and while enough 360 owners are willing to pony up the cash to make it worth their time keep doing it nothing is going to change. It's not like there's any alternative online services for them unless they want to switch platforms. It's one of the major drawbacks of the closed-garden networks that console manufacturers implement - they have a monopoly on things such as services and what to charge (if anything) for them.

Yeah, it was funny when Microsoft tried to pull that GFWL sub.

Which is largely the reason why I despise console online play, yeah it's easy, but you have no choice in the matter. It might be that some console consumers are just easily willing to have the console manufacturer control their access, but that doesn't float with me and probably a lot of other people.

 

[Laser Priest]

I wouldn't say it's unfair.

I would say it's fucking stupid though, because as far as I am aware, Microsoft does not host the servers for online play.

 

[BoTTeNBReKeR]

Yes, it's acceptable, but stupid to pay for imo. In fact, it's one of the reasons I didn't buy an Xbox.

 

[gbemery]

My view is thus. Its the companies game they can charge what they want. It is up to the consumer to justify if said product/service is worthy of the cost. So if you think it is unfair don't pay for it. If you think it is fair or don't care then pay for it.

 

[Nautical Honors Society]

Yes.

They are providing a service and they have a right to charge money for it. And honestly $50 a year is pretty fair.

 

[Waaghpowa]

Yes. People complain "waahh psn is free" PSN also got hacked. You get what you pay for, and if paying for XBL means I have better security, then yes its fair.

Read what this guy said...

Anything connected to the internet is vulnerable.

One of these days XBLA will get hacked and all that extra money will be for naught. It's part of the reason why credit companies don't shell out a ton of money on security, because spending millions of dollars to make cards secure only for it to be broken within the week is a waste of time and money. Not necessarily defending Sony, because they did take some half measures on security, but it doesn't change the fact that it could've occurred regardless if they had beefed up.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

One of these days XBLA will get hacked and all that extra money will be for naught. It's part of the reason why credit companies don't shell out a ton of money on security, because spending millions of dollars to make cards secure only for it to be broken within the week is a waste of time and money. Not necessarily defending Sony, because they did take some half measures on security, but it doesn't change the fact that it could've occurred regardless if they had beefed up.

Sony's problem doesn't stem so much from it's apparently lax network security but it's apparently lax data security. That they got hacked wasn't really the point, it's that the hackers may have made off with a motherlode of unencrypted personal information on PSN users. That's a major issue.

Credit card companies shell out the big money on data security - mainly encryption and offsite redundancy storage. Their network security is there to prevent casual intrusion and nuisance attacks.

None of which will keep a cardholder's info safe if the cardholder doesn't keep their computer security up to date... which is why I always do a system scan looking for keyloggers before I punch in any important info.

 

[rmb1983]

Yes. People complain "waahh psn is free" PSN also got hacked. You get what you pay for, and if paying for XBL means I have better security, then yes its fair.

Read what this guy said...

Anything connected to the internet is vulnerable.

One of these days XBLA will get hacked and all that extra money will be for naught. It's part of the reason why credit companies don't shell out a ton of money on security, because spending millions of dollars to make cards secure only for it to be broken within the week is a waste of time and money. Not necessarily defending Sony, because they did take some half measures on security, but it doesn't change the fact that it could've occurred regardless if they had beefed up.

They already have, and it already is. This is why I specified in my own reasoning that it isn't a marker for debate on whether or not it's a "perk" of the service.

And, again, the OT is querying whether it's fair to charge for online multiplayer. The only relevant "service" Microsoft overheads in regards to this is the Matchmaking interface. All the actual gameplay is done via peer-to-peer or dedicated game servers run by the game's developers/producers (for example, the EA/Dragon Age servers). Whether or not you want to consider that an acceptable cost for them to maintain their service and the fact that it's a pretty small fee, you have to keep in mind just how many Gold subscribers they actually have, in a given year, and how little it actually takes to maintain and upgrade and develop new apps to tack on to Live or a new console-specific feature every year or so.

I pay for Gold because I own a 360 for the exclusives and if I want to explore ALL of the content on games that I've already paid in full for -- this includes a good handful of core game content, too; I'm not referring specific to only multiplayer access -- I really have little to no choice, yeah? $60 a year really isn't a whole lot, but when you consider what you're actually getting out of it, it's highway robbery. Microsoft can easily fund all of the overhead of running the Live platform and still turn up a decent profit just in advertisements through that platform alone. But I digress: The OP was asking specifically about the multiplayer access alone...and not the "service" as a whole.

 

[Snowalker]

I regularily trade games for others. The (multiplayer) games I currently have are Halo: Reach, CoD Black Ops and GTA IV. I play those online with my friend and, as I said, I trade the games in for others a fair bit, thus saving money on the others. This, is what I think, justifys me paying for LIVE, since I save money on the other games (almost like I don't pay for LIVE if you do the math. Something like $60 a year if some good games come out?).
Also, as mentioned in the quote, I really only buy games that are available for both systems and, since my friends have 360s, there's no point getting a PS3 game since I can't play it with them and no exclusives really grab my attention.

But you see I do what you do, but I don't pay for live and just save money. Does that make me a bad person? i get the friend thing, but money is money, and I will never understand throwing it away.

 

[Luthir Fontaine]

well i havent been hacked yet so...

 

[StrangerQ]

Yes.
Their property, Their rules

 

[pyrrhic victory]

As long as that money goes to security or better games in the future, yes it is.

[/thread]

But seriously, it's not at all expensive, <17¢/day if you are foolish enough to pay $60/year for it. You can get 4 accounts for $100, give the supplementary accounts to friends, and split the bill... or get a single account off of amazon.com for $40.

As to whether PSN is just as competent as Xbox Live remains to be seen.

IMHO, the XBL interface is a lot more user friendly than PSN's one, and that's pretty much it.

 

[Justanothergamer300]

Paying for Multiplayer yes but paying for features I don't use or want like Facebook and twitter ... Unfair.

Wish you could pick what you can pay for because all I want is the Multiplayer and party chat

 

[aba1]

If i did not already own a xbox I would buy a ps3 and I hate sony there electroics have poor design and are way overpriced so that says that right there

 

[Wuggy]

I think it's irrelevant whether it's fair or justifiable. It's business, simple as that.