10 a month? I thought it was 50 a YEAR.... Don't you have to pay for most of that stuff anyway? With all the "MS Points"?Whoolpurse post=9.68405.628159 said:
Poll: Should Xbox Live Be Free?
- Thread starter Eagle Est1986
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I should also probably point out that Microsoft won't be in much of a mood to give away Live, seeing as this fiscal year may be the first one in MGS's history to show a profit over four quarters. There's a lot of development costs piled up over the past nine years that need to be paid down, and giving up a steady cashflow like Live subscriptions isn't going to help MS do that.
I don't know if Sony's profits were high enough to subsidise Home, but maybe they've still got some positive balance going for them.
Nintendo is, of course, floating in money and could probably afford to provide a lot more than Wii-codes by tapping off a tiny flow of that gravy-tsunami... though they seem to be opposed to doing a Live-like interface on principled grounds and not for cash-flow reasons.
-- Steve
edited to fix bad phrasing; MGS won't be in the black for all four quarters this year, likely, but it just might earn a profit for the entire year for a change.
I don't know if Sony's profits were high enough to subsidise Home, but maybe they've still got some positive balance going for them.
Nintendo is, of course, floating in money and could probably afford to provide a lot more than Wii-codes by tapping off a tiny flow of that gravy-tsunami... though they seem to be opposed to doing a Live-like interface on principled grounds and not for cash-flow reasons.
-- Steve
edited to fix bad phrasing; MGS won't be in the black for all four quarters this year, likely, but it just might earn a profit for the entire year for a change.
ElArabDeMagnifico, I wasn't saying the Motorhead theme is a status symbol, since only I can see it on my dashboard. I just like it better than the default of free themes & it's not a lot of money to pay for that small privilege. Especially since Motorhead has nothing to do with Microsoft, the 360 or gaming.
Gamerpics which other people can see when they view your profile however, can be seen as status symbols & if people want to pay for that, however misguided, then they should be able to.
For instance, if someone really appreciated Heath Ledger & the Dark Knight film, then they could (hypothetically) pay for a Joker gamer pic as a representation of their taste and as a tribute to the deceased actor.
Also since so many people complain about the price of gamerpics, others could see having a gamerpic which they could afford to buy & others can not, as a status symbol, as stupid as that is.
Gamerpics which other people can see when they view your profile however, can be seen as status symbols & if people want to pay for that, however misguided, then they should be able to.
For instance, if someone really appreciated Heath Ledger & the Dark Knight film, then they could (hypothetically) pay for a Joker gamer pic as a representation of their taste and as a tribute to the deceased actor.
Also since so many people complain about the price of gamerpics, others could see having a gamerpic which they could afford to buy & others can not, as a status symbol, as stupid as that is.
Let me ask you this...If a man walks up to you and says, "I will either give you this chocolate cake for free...or I can charge you 50 dollars a year for it."-assuming you like chocolate cake- would you people actually say..."Gee, I would like to pay you sir for your cake because I am worried about where you will get your money if you continue to offer cakes to people for free."?
Good lord! Microsoft is not hurting for money, kids!! Microsoft pulled in 60.49 billion last year with 22.89 billion as operating income. That's billion with a "B" representing an 18% growth from last year. If this were an oil company we would be talking windfall profits tax. And this year's numbers are going to be higher. The revenue stream alone from downloads, advertising, XNA membership as well as game sales and movie sales is in the 100s of millions. Tell you what...had the 360 not been a poorly made system in need of a 1.1 billion dollar warranty extension program then they could have afforded to make the live service free for 2 years. As it stands the server upkeep and infrastructure was bought and payed for 2 years ago...at this point that 50 dollar a year Live membership fee is a donation to the Microsoft corporate benevolence fund. This is a moot point, however, as late in this generation or in the next, the service will have to become free. Nintendo and Sony will have caught up in providing equivalent online experiences and in the increasingly heated console race asking customers to pay for an online service will become a severe liability to any company still clinging to that market strategy. 500 million a year isn't worth losing the next console battle...Microsoft knows this.
Good lord! Microsoft is not hurting for money, kids!! Microsoft pulled in 60.49 billion last year with 22.89 billion as operating income. That's billion with a "B" representing an 18% growth from last year. If this were an oil company we would be talking windfall profits tax. And this year's numbers are going to be higher. The revenue stream alone from downloads, advertising, XNA membership as well as game sales and movie sales is in the 100s of millions. Tell you what...had the 360 not been a poorly made system in need of a 1.1 billion dollar warranty extension program then they could have afforded to make the live service free for 2 years. As it stands the server upkeep and infrastructure was bought and payed for 2 years ago...at this point that 50 dollar a year Live membership fee is a donation to the Microsoft corporate benevolence fund. This is a moot point, however, as late in this generation or in the next, the service will have to become free. Nintendo and Sony will have caught up in providing equivalent online experiences and in the increasingly heated console race asking customers to pay for an online service will become a severe liability to any company still clinging to that market strategy. 500 million a year isn't worth losing the next console battle...Microsoft knows this.
Got them from various sources a while ago. Obviously numbers have increased on both systems since then. Over 12 months old infact.ElArabDeMagnifico post=9.68405.628167 said:
Just trawled around for a bit. Over 12 million regular live users and 9.8 million total PSN users at last count for both. Both a good few months out of date though. PS3 sales have taken off a fair bit more recently though since bluray won the format war. Curious though how many PS3 users are regular users versus how many have just signed up for the odd thing.
And yep on wifi with both consoles. 360 is further away from the router. And my ISP is bethere based in the UK 24 mbit download. So can easily download large amounts of data quite quickly waiting 4 hours for 1gb via the PS3 was somewhat annoying.
Now I don't agree with the pricing of themes and gamerpics etc which is why I wont buy them. The only thing I do tend to buy is game updates expansion packs etc. I think that is a rip off that they charge for small pictures. But actual service MS wins everytime in my experience...bar Christmas but hey I had the PS3 to fall back on.
What I do wish they would do is standardise the price though. I just fail to see how $50us = £40 UK and $80AUS. Where is the fairness in that!?
I don't mind paying for it. $50 a year? That's about $4.17 a month. Think about that. For $4, you get servers that, barring some catastrophic meltdown, are always up (and after the Christmas incident, they put up a free Arcade game, which seems to me to be an apology), consistent updates, very few disconnects, generally, a very polished online service...for less than an hour's worth of work.
So far I have rarely experienced any lag with my PS3 but lag is inevitable no matter what system you have as there will always be that one person lagging and screwing up everyone else. First/second party titles handle like a dream like Warhawk and Resistance and I've rarely had lag on those games.blarggles post=9.68405.628162 said:
When PSN gets 10 million people, what do you think Sony will do? Will they just all of a sudden start charging people or are they going to upgrade their service entierly so people won't have to pay? Since PSN started free it will stay free even when there are 10 million people using it.
And cut them a piece of a slack, this is Sony's first real attempt at online. I mean, the PS2 barely had any sort of online capabilities. But they do work with MMOs with SOE...
The PSN speed varies from time to time as I don't have the best of all internet connections, but it's relatively fast and downloads are pretty quick for me.
And I may be wrong on this or I could completely word it wrong, but isn't LIVE one big server as apposed to PSN which has multiple servers? IF that's the case, wouldn't PSN be the one charging 50 a year?
Have you actually played that game? It could possibly be the worst thing ever.thebobmaster post=9.68405.628253 said:
Hmmmm..... I wasn't aware that it was that much less Stateside, I knew it was cheaper but I didn't know it was that much. That might explain why more people than I thought are willing to pay.
See over here in the UK, it's £40 which is more or less $80, nearly twice what your guys pay.
Undertow wasn't too bad; I wouldn't have bought the game myself, but it was fun to play for free even if it was cheesier than a volcanic eruption in Wisconsin.Eagle Est1986 said:
As for rates, I think the UK (and maybe Oz) slap VAT on games and the like which makes your retail prices a lot higher for this stuff. Here in Canada we pay pretty much the US rates, though of course the changing exchange rate monkeys that up from time to time.
-- Steve
It really is not all that expensive (~$4 a month if you buy yearly). I'm frankly more disappointed at some of the fiascoes which have gone on surrounding DLC than the fact that Live costs a modest sum: oh yippie I get the privilege of paying to play your games, unfortunately I also have to pay for all the crap that goes with them, too! But anyway. Considering that some people drop $20 bucks a month just to play one game, its not so bad.
Jump... exactly how powerful do you think a server is? Do you really believe that one server can handle ten million people playing dozens of different games all at once 24/7? How do you think they patch it?Jumplion post=9.68405.628304 said:
Microsoft's server cluster is *way* more advanced than Sony's, and in addition, MS maintains the full cluster themselves. With Sony, if a developer wants online with their game, they have to pay for the server and maintanence. With Microsoft, this isn't the case, which is why a few games that've come out on both systems don't have a multiplayer option on the PS3, but do on the 360.
As for what Sony will do as they grow, they'll continue to charge the developers, and charge them more as the server strain grows heavier. You are correct in that it would be awfully difficult for them to start charging for the service now, so they may end up needing to eat the cost a bit and learn from what (I believe) was a mistake in their online implementation.
Having used all three, I think Live is the best service, and as such I'm willing to pay for it. Would I like it to be free? Well sure, but it's just not realistic to expect a free service to be quite so robust.
- J
I think the reason people don't mind paying the money because Microsoft has been charging since day one, 5 years ago. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft is only trying to syphon as much money as they can from their consumers. If you took the 10,000,000 XBL users and let's say half of em are gold members, that's 250 million dollars that Microsoft receives a year. They already have so many servers already, so, that money is strictly profit, not to mention the amount of profit they receive for each system sold and every game/point purchased through Live. So, how can you justify to me spending that kind of money? You can't.
Gotta agree with thebobmaster. The way I figure it is if I can afford a 400+ doller system, I can afford to pay about 7 cents a day for, IMO, the best online service there is. And I'm not exactly swimming in money at the moment either.
It would be nice if it was free, but with the large price reduction they would probably lose money too, downgrading the service somewhat, I said no
I think you forgot to factor in staff. You don't "buy" staff (anymore *cough*) you hire them... and they need salary, benefits, office space, lights, etc. Xbox Live has its own building staffed with people whose only job is to keep Live running. I don't doubt that MS is making a profit on Live, but there is a reason they're charging.TheLoneOne said:
Sony's current multiplayer model puts the burden on the developers to support their own multiplayer, the same as the PC market does. That's free to Sony, but it does make it tougher for the developers.
-- Steve
If its third party i think there should be some pay there somewhere going towards them hopefully, i like to praise third party as they are the future developers to our games, could become there own or may become part of another developer.Jamash post=9.68405.628181 said:
The whole gold card thing works out to, maybe about £5 for those who want to buy one each month, halfing it in price everytime someone wants to pay that extra bit more often is fair because eventually it all adds up the same.
I would like a gold tooth...
But, leaving it up to the developers also gives them more freedom with how they run the online component of their game. That is why UT3 supports mods and the keyboard and mouse combo on the PS3 but not on the 360. Surely letting the community add things to your game isn't a bad thing.Anton P. Nym post=9.68405.628392 said: