Poll: Should Xbox Live Be Free?

[Samirat]

So what if servers cost money. Microsoft is one of (If not the) the richest companies in the world. I think they can afford a few servers. And they make enough money off downloadable content, anyway. I shouldn't have to pay to give them money. And I'm sure if they added a "donate now" paypal link somewhere, people would do it.

No company can go around giving things away. If it costs Microsoft money to maintain XBL, it's going to cost consumers who want the service. And if people would donate for the service, including you, of course, why should you have any trouble paying for it.

 

[TorqueZero]

I couldn't agree more Eagle; last Chrimbo in the UK was a total wipe 360 online-wise. That's £40 a year for what is essentially free for PC games, even though the technologies involved are practically identical. I'd have hoped that all the other riff-raff (paid-for downloadable content, advertising etc) would have been able to finance servers, faster pipes and techies to run them, especially as surely by now the business model must be coming to fruition allowing MS to actually make profit off the consoles themselves. I mean, we funded the recent 360 update, and I can't even get Netflix. Where exactly does that Subs revenue go?

Hey, this wasn't a problem 'till you brought it up. Now I'm a bit miffed. Thanks for raising my awareness?

 

[CriMs0nC0bra]

For how much work goes into Xbox Live, it's well worth it. People can complain all they want but we really do get a good service. There wouldn't be even half of what we have now if it was free, and the servers would be a lot less stable.

Microsoft (as much as I hate to say it..) is doing the best they can with Xbox Live, and really.. They are doing a good job.

@Donstheman,
Wii online is a joke in the modern market. Can't say anything about PSN, because I don't have a PS3. But I did have a PS2 with online enabled, and that was even worse than the Wii. Maybe they've upgraded.

 

[NinjaDwarf]

They make enough money off the other stuff on there. I still don't understand how they get away with charging you for gamer pics and themes (which are just avatars and wallpapers).

And it does NOT cost Microsoft money to run the servers, the players host the games, just like PC. Only games like Phantasy Star Universe have privately run servers and they are nothing to do with MS.

If it can be free on PS3, Wii and PC it can be free on the Xbox.

 

[Relgaro]

I said it should be free, though really i think certain parts should be free, there should be a every 6 months or a yearly membership you should pay with pre-paid cards, in the UK at about £10 every 6 months card £20 for a year, so it counts for paying as 2 6 month card. The amount of money they must be making anyway with advertising in movies, games themselves, having a massive DVD and HD-DVD collection on the Marketplace, classic xbox downloads section all this should be paid for on the side. Gamer pics and Themes should be free along with demos and trailers which are anyway.

Its things like the gamer pictures and themes i dislike they make you pay for the fact it costs roughly just over £1 to buy a picture for your xbox which no one apart from yourself really takes notice of anyway is rediculous and putting your money on the system is a waste, you could go out and buy a pack of sweets for that much and at least its satisfying you in some way. Basically just parts of it should paid for such as the membership, films and other big things that would cost you a fair amount in the real world.

 

[MecaEcco]

Why would anyone say no to a poll on whether or not Xbox live should be free?

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Well for some reason it costs money but I have no idea why, they make millions from live, consoles sales, sales of the games, etc. - and if microsoft can't run a network with all that then their servers must be insane right? Then how come everything is run by P2P and there aren't any dedicated or official servers? The marketplace is..well..a marketplace, which they make a lot of money from too, it's not like your gamerpoints can convert to MS points or anything, so you still have to buy those MS points.

Everyone acts as if Live was free the economy would crash and Microsoft would go out of business, exactly what is Live doing that so many other networks don't do? Are the console sales and sales of DLC and games not enough to cover it? -or the advertising?

I also don't see what Live does better than anyone else except the Wii's online system (which is practically a joke), I mean the thing doesn't even have dedicated servers and has insane amount of lag, so exactly what is it that justifies the (small) payment? It's only 50 dollars a year for a gold membership but why bother buying a cheap system if you've got to add a subscription fee to it? Why should I pay to play a game online for a non MMO game I already payed for, pay for my internet, AND get advertising (for the thing I purchased) shoved up my ass?

Sorry if my ignorance upsets anyone but through my eyes, Xbox live is a rip off (and the descriptions on Xbox.com's site don't make it sound like any less of one), even if it is only 50 dollars a year. Even that small amount can make a huge difference in your bills, you aren't paying JUST for XboxLIVE you know - just because something is affordable doesn't mean it isn't a rip off.

I could go on forever about this really, only problem is that everyone who responds either sounds like a MS lobbyist or someone trying to explain that they didn't get scammed after buying one of these [http://www.cracked.com/article_16484_6-retarded-gas-saving-schemes-people-are-actually-trying.html] so please if you must respond just tell me why MS needs that fee if all the other money we gave them can't support live, they already have the silver membership available.

 

[Jumplion]

Wait wait wait, if PSN can be free why can't LIVE?

How do you think Sony keeps PSN free? If they can make their online service free then why can't MS? I would honestly like to know, because if you break it down PSN offers pretty much exactly what LIVE offers for free with more updates along the way.

If LIVE were to go free, I would suspect that there would be a starting LIVE subscription for free and a premium LIVE service that you would pay for, you know like how some websites say "Subscribe now! No ads, more thumbnails, updates on the spot!" type of thing when the only real differnece (to my knowledge) between Silver and Gold membership is that only Gold lets you go online.

 

[anNIALLator]

i don't mind paying because xbox live is the best service available, and if it was free then some downloads would probably cost more.

 

[Eagle Est1986]

Wow, I'm actually quite surprised at how many people disagree with me. I really didn't think that this many people would be ok with paying for something that other companies offer for free.

Just as a simple comparison, the PSN gets updated just as much (if not more) than Xbox Live plus it doesn't cost me a penny and I don't have to put up with shameless advertising being shoved down my throat. Why the hell can't Xbox Live match that?

 

[Jamash]

Gamer pics and Themes should be free along with demos and trailers which are anyway.

Its things like the gamer pictures and themes i dislike they make you pay for the fact it costs roughly just over £1 to buy a picture for your xbox which no one apart from yourself really takes notice of anyway is rediculous and putting your money on the system is a waste, you could go out and buy a pack of sweets for that much and at least its satisfying you in some way.

I've got something like 50+ gamerpics & 20+ themes on my 360 & I've only paid for 1 (A Motorhead theme which I was happy to pay for), the rest were free. If someone want to pay for a pic or theme they should be able to do so.
I like to spend an extra £1 when shopping & buy the softer toilet paper, even though no one apart from myself really notices, I'm still gald I have the choice to spend my money on what I choose to though.

It's like saying "All wishing wells should be blocked off because people throw their money in them, when they could be buying sweets instead". Maybe a bit extreme but hopefully you see my point.

Some people may see the gamerpics you pay for as a bit of a status symbol, & if they want to pay for that, then they should have that choice. Isn't a gamerpic like a bit like the equivalent of a band T-shirt? If someone wants to pay money to represent their individual tastes then they should be able too.

Also people do pay attention to other people's gamerpics etc. more than you think. For instance, I can deduce that you like to spend your time skulking in dark corridors throwing fireballs at people. Am I right or am I right?

 

[Relgaro]

Gamer pics and Themes should be free along with demos and trailers which are anyway.

Its things like the gamer pictures and themes i dislike they make you pay for the fact it costs roughly just over £1 to buy a picture for your xbox which no one apart from yourself really takes notice of anyway is rediculous and putting your money on the system is a waste, you could go out and buy a pack of sweets for that much and at least its satisfying you in some way.

I've got something like 50+ gamerpics & 20+ themes on my 360 & I've only paid for 1 (A Motorhead theme which I was happy to pay for), the rest were free. If someone want to pay for a pic or theme they should be able to do so.
I like to spend an extra £1 when shopping & buy the softer toilet paper, even though no one apart from myself really notices, I'm still gald I have the choice to spend my money on what I choose to though.

It's like saying "All wishing wells should be blocked off because people throw their money in them, when they could be buying sweets instead". Maybe a bit extreme but hopefully you see my point.

Some people may see the gamerpics you pay for as a bit of a status symbol, & if they want to pay for that, then they should have that choice. Isn't a gamerpic like a bit like the equivalent of a band T-shirt? If someone wants to pay money to represent their individual tastes then they should be able too.

Also people do pay attention to other people's gamerpics etc. more than you think. For instance, I can deduce that you like to spend your time skulking in dark corridors throwing fireballs at people. Am I right or am I right?

I suppose i do see where you coming from, that wishing well thing actually made me laugh because i can imagine someone somewhere doing something like that... most probably me. And yes in fact i do... doom will at some point rise to earth, and i will make sure i am first and the flaming shit throwing contest. But yes gamerpics do kind of define your profile your right, but personally i dont want to spend money buying them and i do have alot in fact that are free... i swear some appear after playing some games, but i only really said that you shouldnt pay for it purely because microsoft dont really need that extra £1... unless Bill Gates is soon going to fund into Andrex because he loves the soft pillowy coushins lined with aloe vera wiping his diry messes away.

 

[HSIAMetalKing]

Man, it'd be nice if it was free.

Yup.

Sigh.

 

[mgt25]

Xbox Live shouldn't be free because it costs money to run the servers and keep the maintenance. The have a few million customers worldwide and provide an excellent service. A price drop would be nice though.

yes.

 

[poleboy]

I agree that it should be free, lets not forget that Nintendo and Sony also have a large server upkeep and they still manage to do so for free, so I dont see why Microsoft cant do it either.

Good point. Actually that argument works pretty well against Windows as well. What DOES Windows/Live offer that is so radically better than the free alternative other than support for/access to games/applications that were tailored to the system anyway, solely because of its popularity?

Wii online is a joke in the modern market.

Wii online is certainly more restrictive, but I would like you to elaborate a bit on this beyond "Wii online sucks". Although I agree that most of the really fun online Wii extras (VC, browser access) costs money, so the idea is kind of lost there. But at least it's free to play.

 

[Shushyne4np2ne]

It should, but it shouldn't.


Of course, everyone wants it free. I hope that they don't go and scrap the guest feature. My girlfriend doesn't want to pay for gold, but we play Rock band and Halo 3 online together. She may not get the achievements (She doesn't care), but it's still allowing her to get online.

It shouldn't because everyone here that has said it is indeed right: Servers cost money. Maintenance costs money. Would you rather have crappy servers on a free service or amazing servers on a pay service? (I know, sometimes Live's servers are a bit janky)

 

[Whoolpurse]

No it shouldn't, think of all the services you get, Online play, demos videa and whatnot, gamecontent. Most of that would be gone if we didn't pay those damned 10 bucks a month.

 

[blarggles]

Wait wait wait, if PSN can be free why can't LIVE?

How do you think Sony keeps PSN free? If they can make their online service free then why can't MS? I would honestly like to know, because if you break it down PSN offers pretty much exactly what LIVE offers for free with more updates along the way.

If LIVE were to go free, I would suspect that there would be a starting LIVE subscription for free and a premium LIVE service that you would pay for, you know like how some websites say "Subscribe now! No ads, more thumbnails, updates on the spot!" type of thing when the only real differnece (to my knowledge) between Silver and Gold membership is that only Gold lets you go online.

Firstly its down to the sheer number of users. Last time I checked 10 million+ Live users vs 2 million PS3 users who use the system on line. Which results in a lot more money being needed on servers.

On the PS3 the games developers are responsible for the servers which is why on new games you often find them very laggy on the PS3 if they have underestimated the load they will receive. Think GTA4 terrible at first on the PS3 but worked fine on the 360. Reason for that is MS are actually responsible for the servers on the live system the money you spend on live is what goes towards them as well as other running costs with a bit taken out for profit. Obviously.

The Christmas problems were caused by over 2 million new signups to the live system in just a few days. To put that into perspective as many people signed up in a week to live as the PSN has had total in the 18 months it had been around. Including the same Christmas period. Not hard to see why the servers are going to struggle. The network infrastructure simply was not in place. Mainly due to estimates being wrong. MS thought they had another 3 to 6 months to get the network ready for that many new users and were unfortunately wrong.

What you have to keep in mind is that MS were smart enough to realise that Multiplayer gaming is/was the future and built up a suitable service created around large server farms for it. Which cost them in excess of $500,000,000 dollars to set up the first lot of servers. Since then the server has expanded massively and those servers have had to be updated and more added. Meaning more costs involved. Sony's system is no where near as complex nor as expensive hence they can offer it for free. MS simply can't.

Do the maths. If all the 10 million gold subscribers are currently paying for the full 12 month service it just covers the cost of those servers. Now a lot of those accounts are not 12 month subscriptions. Then you have to add in bandwidth costs, electricity costs, Maintenance of said servers, And wages of the people running it updating it etc.

Works out to be a rather large sum of money in the end. Especially when the system has increased in cost since that first $500,000,000 investment.

One thing that is very noticeable with my PS3 usage as I own both systems. Is that PSN is a hell of a lot slower than live when it comes to downloads etc. Live may cost you money but at the end of the day the service is superior. You just can't say one is superior because it is free.

Another way to look at it. You could go to a designer clothes store and buy a pair of jeans or go to market and get some knock offs that look the same. But each time the designer ones are likely to be the better quality better fitting pair. You get what you pay for. And it shows with the live service in my opinion. I don't mind paying for something if it is good. And with live being so cheap it isn't that bad at the end of the day.

At the end of the day we would all love something for nothing but it just isn't the way the world works. And I would rather pay for quality at the end of the day.

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Jamash I get what your saying but it's a frikin' Gamerpic, not a custom Helmet for your Halo 3 player, it's just a God damn picture, and you can get a different picture for one extra dollar (or pound..)? What seperates that picture from the other pictures? Seirously, there's like a trillion pictures on the net and I can upload any single one onto my avatar for escapist, but for Motorhead on XBL we gotta pay a buck? I'm sure it's worth it but bear with me I don't have XBL, so I don't know how awesome that motorhead theme is but if a 1 dollar motorhead theme is seen as a "status symbol" then it also sounds like another case of "trying to justify getting ripped off" - I've got tons of themes for my PS3 and online for my PC at like, Stardock or something, or a motorhead wallpaper, honestly I could go on forever but what makes the other picture worth the 1 dollar? I just can't see it, it feels like being nickle and dimed.


EDIT: Err, blarrgles, where did you get all that? I've been hearing (and experiencing) the exact opposite of everything you said, except the number of users for PSN and XBL, and I thought XBL was a lot smaller than that, and PSN wasn't so embarrassingly small but nowhere close to XBL's numbers. As for download speed, are you on Wi-Fi? cuz my PSN downloads are fine, both XBL and PSN feel the same to me, so I guess ISP has a lot to do with it.

 

[Jamash]

I suppose i do see where you coming from, that wishing well thing actually made me laugh because i can imagine someone somewhere doing something like that... most probably me. And yes in fact i do... doom will at some point rise to earth, and i will make sure i am first and the flaming shit throwing contest. But yes gamerpics do kind of define your profile your right, but personally i dont want to spend money buying them and i do have alot in fact that are free... i swear some appear after playing some games, but i only really said that you shouldnt pay for it purely because microsoft dont really need that extra £1... unless Bill Gates is soon going to fund into Andrex because he loves the soft pillowy coushins lined with aloe vera wiping his diry messes away.

I agree that Microsoft doesn't need the extra £1, but aren't some themes & gamerpics also made by 3rd parties, like disruptive publishers? I suppose the extra £1 will mean a lot more to them than to Microsoft, especially if they have to share proceeds with Microsoft. Also couldn't the cost have something to do with copyrighted material? The same goes for film rentals.

I'm quite lucky in the fact that pre-loaded the pirate gamerpic suits me really well, I like pirates & also have a beard & gold tooth! As silly as I think it is to spend money on gamerpics, I will defend peoples right to do so.

I also agree with your idea about the pre-paid 6 month Gold cards, except not every month has an equal number of days, so small problems could arise with people feeling they've been ripped off a day somewhere.