Why do people pay for Xbox Live?

[-Samurai-]

I pay so I can use online multiplayer.

But why are you paying Microsoft for a service they aren't providing you? It's like paying EA a monthly fee to play COD, why would you do that?

Because if you had to pay each and every company money to play on their servers, you'd rack up a hell of a lot more than 60 quid a year.

Even if thats not the case, do you really want to handle putting in a subscription and cancelling it every couple weeks? Its unneeded hassle, live puts it all into one service, sorts out the payments to EA, Activision, etc and it does it all for the low low price of £40 a year.

The idea that Microsoft takes your money and distributes it to developers and publishers is more than laughable.

Hell, most developers don't even host multiplayer servers anymore(although they do have stat tracking servers). They're all peer to peer. The server is the guy with the best connection. So saying that you pay Microsoft to use an Activision or EA server that doesn't exist is ridiculous.

Oh really? So how come when say, the servers for black ops go down, nobody can play?

The servers store the players information, without that, nobody can play. I think that kind of counts.

Hell, if it was all peer to peer, Demon souls players wouldn't care that atlas was taking down the servers soon.

Hence the parentheses that say "(although they do have stat tracking servers). And I neglected to mention the master server, which is a given.

Do you really think that a dedicated machine has to pause the game to find a new host? Games like Black Ops use peer to peer hosting(except for their PC version which has dedicated servers available for a price. And even then it's through a third party.).

Of course not, but i'm saying that without the servers that the company has, people wouldn't be able to play. It just doesn't work. End of.

I think you or I may have misread or something.

I wasn't questioning the use of the master server or stat tracking server. I was commenting on the lack of dedicated servers, and how you aren't paying for them because they don't exist(in certain games such as Black Ops).

 

[Lord Doomhammer]

Look at PSN... Now look at XBL.


That is all.

/thread

I'm willing to bet that Live has actually had more downtime before this incident than PSN. It's not like Live can't be hacked and brought down.

I've been on live for the past 5 years, I play games like Crysis2 and the various halo games almost daily... In all these years I can count about 3 total days that xbox has been down. It was because someone tried to hack the service, my information was not stolen nor were any of my friends.

 

[Kuilui]

Look at PSN... Now look at XBL.


That is all.

/thread

I'm willing to bet that Live has actually had more downtime before this incident than PSN. It's not like Live can't be hacked and brought down.

I've been on live for the past 5 years, I play games like Crysis2 and the various halo games almost daily... In all these years I can count about 3 total days that xbox has been down. It was because someone tried to hack the service, my information was not stolen nor were any of my friends.

Yea ever since this PSN incident happened I hear people saying every so often. Well I bet that xbl has been down way more! People that clearly dont have live or ever had. I've had xbox live for over 6 years and aside from that one quick incident and the fact they take live off for a day once every year or two for major updates they need to implement there really never has been any major downtime.

 

[Space Spoons]

Well, personally, I pay for it because if I didn't pay for it, I wouldn't be able to play my games online with my friends. Yeah, it sucks, and I'm not about to defend Microsoft, whose money-grubbing ways are very well known to me. It's more of an "it is what it is" kind of thing. I play games to unwind, I'd rather not get involved in some kind of "vote with your wallet/show them that they can't do this" gamer campaign. If they wanna charge for the service, fine. It's worth it to me.

Also, and this is slightly off-topic, this question couldn't have been asked at a worse time. You're just begging for anti-PSN/pro-Live comments.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

Gotta say, this is a really weird time to be bringing this up. It's not exactly a high price, either.

Let's say you got an XBox Live account when the 360 came out, then let's say you've had it until the 360 is replace by Microsoft's next console and let's say for the sake of arguement that it's 3 years from now.

You've had Live for what? Around 9 years. So, that's 60$ a month for 12 months a year.

You've spent over 6000$

I know tossing a dollar away doesn't seem like much, but if you did it every day for 2 years, you'd have spent more on that 'little' thing then a person who bought the PS3 at it's initial 600.00$ price.


Edit: Apparently Live's 60 a year. Sorry, I didn't know.


So, let me just change this around.

540$


Hn. That's actually not as bad. I mean, it's like buying two Xboxes.

Still, it's the arguement of paying money for barely anything and not caring because it's not a big amount.


Like paying 10$ for a 6 ml bottle of soda and not caring since 10$ isn't much.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

I think PT Barnam said it best. "Theres a sucker born every minute"

Anyone wanna see my Egres?

Reminds me of that line in Married With Children when Al goes to a Salon.

"You don't really charge 60$, do you?"

"You know our motto. People are suckers."

 

[AWC Viper]

Oh sorry I'm late to the thread. I was playing online with some friends using cross game chat on my xbox.

So what did i miss? can i get some cliff notes?

 

[endplanets]

is not incurring any costs or bandwidth when you play COD online as you are not playing on Microsoft's servers (you are not even playing on a server as almost every console online game is player hosted) and the publisher of the game is running the game servers that just track stats and nothing else.

Wait, what? If I remember correctly I heard a game developer say on Invisible Walls or another show that XBox makes servers for games on its systems as a way to streamline/increase conformity for the console and improve quality compared to PSN where developers put up the servers which can be different. The show then said that that was the reason that XBox live is faster/less laggy than the PSN. The other thing that the show said is that the fact that Xbox puts up its own servers is why it has to charge for online play.
Anyone know for sure.

 

[Keith Reedy]

Well we're apparently trying to see how long a person with no point can contradict people with no proof to keep a thread going.

 

[Elegy of Fools]

The simple question stands: $60 a year is invested per player into Xbox Live -- do you actually know what that payment gets you? I would wager not since the thread immediately derailed into claims of fanboy-isms and attacks on other networks. Not to mention Live's price was increased last November, and even they had a hard time explaining it [http://consumerist.com/2010/11/microsoft-explains-why-its-xbox-live-price-hike-is-good-and-good-for-you.html].

You can make many justifications as to why you pay, sure "I get CoD maps before anyone else!" but what would happen if the service was free? Well, odds are you'd still get those maps the same day as before, and everyone else would, too; you're paying money not to get something sooner, but to make someone else get something later.

The services offered by Xbox Live should very well be free, they would suffer no decreased quality if they were.

Unfortunately the entire argument is moot since they will continue charging, and people will continue paying believing they are actually getting something for their money.

 

[emeraldrafael]

Because microsoft said so, and they realize tey make money on it. I wouldnt be surprised if sony started charging for PSN after what happened.

 

[The Apothecarry]

Because the games I play on Live are more fun with other people.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

All the features are free everywhere else and Microsoft is not providing online gaming, Netflix, last.fm, etc. It's kinda like buying say Assassin's Creed (or any non-EA game) and giving EA a couple bucks just for the hell of it.

We still don't mind paying for it though. Netflix and Last FM are there just for convenience and for those who wanted it, and by your posts I'm going to assume that you don't own or frequently play on an Xbox.

Netflix can be used for free and very conveniently on the PS3 and Wii with ONLY PAYING NETFLIX and your ISP. On 360, you have to pay Netflix, your ISP, and Microsoft (who does nothing in the process of watching Netflix content). I don't own an Xbox but I do know of what features it has. The PS3 actually have more features that the Xbox doesn't that I use. For example, I can put videos on my PS3 hard drive (something you can't do on the 360 for some insanely stupid reason) and the PS3 supports soft subs via the .divx container that is not supported on the 360 since at my friend's house (where there is a 360), we've tried making .divx videos with subs and they don't work on the 360.

Because if you had to pay each and every company money to play on their servers, you'd rack up a hell of a lot more than 60 quid a year.

Can't afford £40 a year? Get a job.

I realise companies provide a service over PSN for free, but from what I hear, they shut down the servers faster too.

Microsoft doesn't send your Xbox live money to Activision to keep up the COD servers. There are no COD servers (it's all peer-to-peer) except for the game servers which aren't run by Microsoft. The publisher decides when to turn off the servers. Plus, the servers cost only pennies to run (and the price for that is included when you buy the game) since they only track game stats, just a couple KBs of bandwidth per game.

I'm not paying anyone 40 pounds for doing nothing whether I'm a millionaire or going paycheck-to-paycheck. What games can I play online on 360 that I can no longer play on the PS3?

I own an Xbox 360 and I'm willing to bet that that Xbox plus two years of Live is cheaper than a PS3

I'll go with launch prices as the consoles are closer in price now and Live is more money:

Xbox 20GB Pro launch model vs the 20GB PS3 launch model:

You wouldn't want the HD-less 360, plus you have to buy an overpriced HD from Microsoft to put a HD in the console. Both systems have 20GBs of HD space and no Wi-Fi. The PS3 is backwards compatible with PS2 games though.

360 was $400 + $100 (2 years of Live at $50/year) = $500

PS3 was $500 + $0 for PSN = $500

Where are you saving money?

 

[Korolev]

They charge because they want to charge money and they think they can get away with it, and whadda ya know, they can. Are they evil? Are they horrible demons from the muck? NO! They're business people.

Sony would charge for the PSN if it had no competition. The only reason, the ONLY reason that the PSN is largely free is due to the fact that Sony wants to draw customers away from Xbox LIVE. That's the sole reason. Sony didn't provide a free PSN out of the goodness of their hearts (which, I believe, they are forced to relinquish upon admission to business school), they provided it out of a bloody cold-hard calculation that it was a good business tactic to lure customers. If Xbox LIVE didn't exist, they wouldn't offer the PSN for free at all. They'd charge for it, just like Microsoft.

If the PSN had come out first, then it would be Microsoft that would be offering the free multiplayer in a bid to lure PSN customers away.

But Microsoft already have an established consumer base. They have (and yes, THEY HAVE) sat down and calculated whether or not they would make more money if they offered Xbox LIVE for free to attract more customers, and the numbers said NO. THAT'S why they are charging - because they can, because enough of their customers pay for it, and because they would not gain more than they lose if they offered it for free. HARD. COLD. MATHEMATICS is behind the decision. It's behind every decision Sony or Microsoft make. They're companies, not your friends.

As for why people pay for Xbox LIVE - because they have to, to play the multiplayer games. No one else is offering Free Halo or Free Gears of War multiplayer! And obviously they like those games enough to pay for the Multiplayer.

It's not that hard a thing to grasp. Really.

 

[Jegsimmons]

better community, better security, doesn't go down for more than a day and they usually let us know about it, the amount of games with multi-player, its isnt that much in hindsight, additional content, netflix/facebook/twitter/other crap i don't use but appreciate the effort, and actually try and make it our money's worth.

also people are unfortunately not making a lot of pc games anymore out side of MMORPGs.

 

[Elegy of Fools]

They charge because they want to charge money and they think they can get away with it, and whadda ya know, they can. Are they evil? Are they horrible demons from the muck? NO! They're business people.

Sony would charge for the PSN if it had no competition. The only reason, the ONLY reason that the PSN is largely free is due to the fact that Sony wants to draw customers away from Xbox LIVE. That's the sole reason. Sony didn't provide a free PSN out of the goodness of their hearts (which, I believe, they are forced to relinquish upon admission to business school), they provided it out of a bloody cold-hard calculation that it was a good business tactic to lure customers. If Xbox LIVE didn't exist, they wouldn't offer the PSN for free at all. They'd charge for it, just like Microsoft.

If the PSN had come out first, then it would be Microsoft that would be offering the free multiplayer in a bid to lure PSN customers away.

But Microsoft already have an established consumer base. They have (and yes, THEY HAVE) sat down and calculated whether or not they would make more money if they offered Xbox LIVE for free to attract more customers, and the numbers said NO. THAT'S why they are charging - because they can, because enough of their customers pay for it, and because they would not gain more than they lose if they offered it for free. HARD. COLD. MATHEMATICS is behind the decision. It's behind every decision Sony or Microsoft make. They're companies, not your friends.

As for why people pay for Xbox LIVE - because they have to, to play the multiplayer games. No one else is offering Free Halo or Free Gears of War multiplayer! And obviously they like those games enough to pay for the Multiplayer.

It's not that hard a thing to grasp. Really.

This pretty much sums up the entire ordeal; People are paying because Microsoft asks them to. They aren't getting anything special or extra; just access to what could otherwise be free. And Microsoft is a very successful business model, which is what scared me when they did step into the gaming realm -- remember they like monopolies.

 

[General_Potatoes]

Well, we pay to not have our information stolen >.>

<..>

And it seems to be working too.