Why do people pay for Xbox Live?

[Kevin Lyons]

Okay I've seen something like this before. Instead of having ONE set price plan for their customers, Microsoft most likely should just have a customizable price plan that will let you include the features you will actually use. For example, I don't EVER use my Xbox for music! So I should be able to just pay for the Gaming, Downloads, Party Chat, and Videos! BUT Microsoft knows that people will buy their entire subscription because everyone else does.

 

[omega_peaches]

Guys, the PSN down jokes got old after the first 1000.

it did for PS3 owners
though seriously It's a simple thing
I own an Xbox 360 and I'm willing to bet that that Xbox plus two years of Live is cheaper than a PS3

Xbox=$300
1 Year of Live=$60
300+60+60=420
PS3=300
420>300
Basic math get?

 

[Jegsimmons]

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?

well for starters by the time the PS3 came out the 360 was about 50-100 dollars cheaper. plus we actually got a head set for online play, and GAMES for online play....and i don't use hd on my 360 (couldn't care honestly) and the PS3 is not the only games with backwards compatibility, i still played halo 2 on my 360 which was one of the best game for multi-player.

while even the 80 gig ps3 i received didn't have a head set, was still fucking expensive, had very few games for multi-player that remotely appealed to me (killzone is that consoles saving grace)and when the thing finally loaded up, got plugged up, set up, and what ever kind of mess up i could finally play....but alas...for all that time...it was messy and disappointing.
hell microsoft gives you a month free of gold live when you first get it, plus 48 hours trials for every new game so you can make a decision if you want it. I felt like Sony was holding back on me. Though that just my personal experience. Yours may vary.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

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.

Xbox LIVE's down time before this incident? Not even close. I'm gonna ask you a question: Which consoles do you own?

I only own a PS3 but I've played the Wii and 360 quite often at friends' places. There was some Christmas/Holiday period where Live was off and on for a few weeks. Plus, Live has gone down for a day to do an update. PSN goes down here and there for maintenance for a few hours only. Sony usually says PSN will be down for 8 hours but it's almost always up several hours early. I would say the downtimes would be close (before this incident) so no one was way ahead but I would think Live has been down a bit more than PSN. I tried finding the data for this but I just couldn't find a site with it. Plus, PS3 users can use Netflix and the Internet browser when PSN is down.

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.

I know for sure even Halo doesn't even have servers outside of the basic stat tracking servers. Almost every game is peer-to-peer meaning the lag is solely dependent on the host player's connection, the other players' connections, and the game's netcode. When you play Halo and have to migrate hosts when the host leaves, that proves you are not on dedicated servers. Microsoft may do a little something with matchmaking or something to improve that stuff but that doesn't help with lag.

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.

LOL, look up peer-to-peer networking. Here you go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer

Here's the Xbox live Silver/Gold breakdown:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_live

Tell me which Gold services aren't FREE everywhere else.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Everything I'm about to say is completely factual.

Well, if it's completely factual, where are your sources?

Peer-to-peer networking (how online gaming works):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer

Here's the Xbox live Silver/Gold breakdown:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_live

Tell me which Gold services aren't FREE everywhere else.

 

[RevRaptor]

Mostly because Microsoft ask us to and its so cheap it's really no big deal. I mean really its like $1.80 or so a week (its 85.80 a year here in NZ). It's not like they is asking all that much and xbox live is a lot better than the playstation network. If having to pay is what keeps it a quality service then I'm happy to pay. I mean really $7.20 a month is no big deal cups of coffee cost more than that down here.

 

[dystopiaINC]

honestly i love my live, and most of my gaming is on Xbox live. and at $60 a year it's very reasonable. hell i could afford that before i even had a job, now i have a job and i'm making easily enough to pay for it. i could pay it with out hassle fore several years off of one months salary not counting my other bills. really when i'm paying over $230 to drive a month and gas as it is in the US my membership comes to about $5 a month. it it really worth bitching about people? beside Microsoft has always been very supportive of me when ever i had a problem with my Xbox, which was only 3 times in six years.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

OP fails to realise that the cost of something is not determined by the resources it requires to produce, but rather by the demand for the product itself.

People pay for Xbox Live because they like Xbox Live. The fact that Microsoft is externalising costs doesn't change the fact that if you want to play online with an Xbox, you have to pay for Xbox Live. Further, the benefit you as a subscriber derive from paying for Xbox Live is not substantially different regardless of who provides the resources for the service. Microsoft is just leveraging its licenses in an extremely sensible way. Virtually any business in the same position would do the same thing. Note here that Valve is not in the same position as it doesn't hold any sort of hardware monopoly over the devices that run the games sold on it.

My father used to complain about burritos with too much rice or beans in them because "rice and beans are cheap". But the argument makes no sense - either the burrito is good or it isn't. Its value to you is not necessarily equal to the value of its constituent parts to you let alone the resale value of its constituent parts.

TL;DR: Your refusal is based on a very naive understanding of economics.

 

[Keith Reedy]

Everything I'm about to say is completely factual.

Well, if it's completely factual, where are your sources?

Peer-to-peer networking (how online gaming works):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer

Here's the Xbox live Silver/Gold breakdown:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_live

Tell me which Gold services aren't FREE everywhere else.

Holy cow actual sources! I am amazed! To bad you can just put whatever pleases you on wikipedia.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

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

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

Where are you saving money?

well for starters by the time the PS3 came out the 360 was about 50-100 dollars cheaper. plus we actually got a head set for online play, and GAMES for online play....and i don't use hd on my 360 (couldn't care honestly) and the PS3 is not the only games with backwards compatibility, i still played halo 2 on my 360 which was one of the best game for multi-player.

That $50 cheaper was then just an addition year of Live you would have to pay for. Like I said, if I did the price comparison now, it would be even more in PS3's favor. What online GAMES do you have that I don't? Are you talking about 1st-party games because the PS3 has more 1st-party online exclusive games, there's Warhawk, MAG, Killzone, Resistence, Uncharted, SOCOM, Metal Gear Online, etc., the 360 only has Halo and Gears. I'm sorry but almost every gamer needs more than the 256MBs or 512MBs a memory card allows for, DEMOS are bigger than that. PS3's backwards compatibility whether hardware or emulation-based is far better than the 360's backwards compatibility, 99+% of PS2 games are supported on any PS3 with backwards compatibility.

 

[Sporky111]

I only paid for it because the games I wanted to play online were on the 360. And the voice chat is nice.

That being said, I've always said Microsoft just gouges their customers for all they can. You have to pay for the console, then the adaptor on top of that (unless you game within 10 feet of your router), then the HDMI cable if you want to play to the full graphics capabilities, then you have to pay for the online service to play online. It doesn't seem right to buy a game from this developer, then have to pay all kinds of money to the middle-man (Microsoft) to get the full experience from it.

It's ridiculous really, none of the other major gaming platforms feel the need to make their customers pay extra for this stuff.

 

[loc978]

People pay for what they know they like. Argue as hard as you will that they're paying for crap... just realize that they actually like something that you consider to be crap. As a PC gaming elitist who built his first computer years before the first Playstation hit the shelves in 1994, I have a hard time understanding the positions of a vast majority of gamers these days.
...but that doesn't make 'em wrong.

 

[Arizona Kyle]

This is not at all a Live sucks, PSN is better thread, I actually think both services are very similar in what they do and how well they do it. Everything I'm about to say is completely factual.

My problem with Live is that Microsoft wants to have their cake and eat it too as Microsoft charges you for services they don't provide. The FREE Silver Live account offers services that actually cost Microsoft money and resources to provide. Running and maintaining the servers that store the games, demos, DLC, etc. for everyone to download is at least 90% of the expenses of the Live service. And, all that stuff is offered for FREE through Silver membership because Microsoft wants everyone to have access to their store so people can spend money in their store.

For Live Gold membership, Microsoft charges you for Netflix, online gaming, Facebook, last.fm, etc. So, in order for you to have the ability to watch Netflix, you have to pay Netflix, your ISP, and MICROSOFT!!! Microsoft is not incurring any costs of any kind when you watch stuff off Netflix, Netflix is streaming movies from their servers using their bandwidth to you over your bandwidth that you are paying for, Microsoft is not involved in any way. To prove, rather simply, for people who might not believe that, PS3 users can still use Netflix with PSN down.

Onto online gaming, which is another big slap in the face to Live customers from Microsoft. If you play any third party game (e.g. COD), Microsoft 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. For a game like COD, the developer puts probably about half its resources into the multiplayer aspect of the game so about half the money you payed for the game is for the multiplayer. On Live, you have to pay Microsoft to unlock game content (online multiplayer) that you already payed for when you bought the game. The only thing that would make sense is if for Microsoft to allow online multiplayer for 3rd party games for Silver accounts, but only allow Gold accounts to pay first party games online. However, Microsoft isn't going to do that because people would be like, "I can play COD or Bad Company for free, screw Halo and Gears" and those communities would be a lot smaller. Also, Microsoft doesn't even run any dedicated servers whereas Sony does run dedicated severs for a few games (MAG, Killzone, Warhawk, etc.).

The only service Microsoft is providing you for Gold membership is cross-game chat so you are basically paying $60 a year for cross-game chat and that is it.

This is why I will never pay for Live as I'm not going to pay someone for a service they aren't providing, it's that simple. If Sony pulled this, I'd turn into a PC gamer and use Steam, which also provides the same services Live Gold does for free.

Third party developers dont pay to have there game on XBL for download They do on PSN (This includes demos and much more stuff)

XBL has faster speeds and less down time then the PSN

XBL has more features as well as more users

XBL has cross game chat

XBL has avitars (small but still there)

XBL has its own security devision that is set up to catch hackers and cheaters and does nothing else other then that PSN does not (atleast not as big i admit that i was wrong on PSN not having that i wont lie to you)

very tired cant think of much else i dont play xbox to much now cuz school is still in session

 

[Mr C]

You get what you pay for I suppose. I use Live and will use PSN again when it comes back on. Live is significantly better the PSN and a measly $5 per month is nothing. Though I can imagine if you are a student or a child then it may be a pain.

I actually wish Sony copied M$ from the beginning. I believe a revenue stream would have motivated them to make the PSN better before the latest Sony PR disaster.

They offered a sub-standard service for free and Playstation Home - the biggest waste of my bandwidth ever.

Multiformat games I buy for the 360 because Live is better, not to mention the fact that 360 games (in the Asian region) are often cheaper and have pointless yet addictive achievements.

 

[Arizona Kyle]

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

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

Where are you saving money?

well for starters by the time the PS3 came out the 360 was about 50-100 dollars cheaper. plus we actually got a head set for online play, and GAMES for online play....and i don't use hd on my 360 (couldn't care honestly) and the PS3 is not the only games with backwards compatibility, i still played halo 2 on my 360 which was one of the best game for multi-player.

That $50 cheaper was then just an addition year of Live you would have to pay for. Like I said, if I did the price comparison now, it would be even more in PS3's favor. What online GAMES do you have that I don't? Are you talking about 1st-party games because the PS3 has more 1st-party online exclusive games, there's Warhawk, MAG, Killzone, Resistence, Uncharted, SOCOM, Metal Gear Online, etc., the 360 only has Halo and Gears. I'm sorry but almost every gamer needs more than the 256MBs or 512MBs a memory card allows for, DEMOS are bigger than that. PS3's backwards compatibility whether hardware or emulation-based is far better than the 360's backwards compatibility, 99+% of PS2 games are supported on any PS3 with backwards compatibility.

But there are not alot of PS3s with backwards compadibility that like saying 99% of 20%

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

OP fails to realise that the cost of something is not determined by the resources it requires to produce, but rather by the demand for the product itself.

People pay for Xbox Live because they like Xbox Live. The fact that Microsoft is externalising costs doesn't change the fact that if you want to play online with an Xbox, you have to pay for Xbox Live. Further, the benefit you as a subscriber derive from paying for Xbox Live is not substantially different regardless of who provides the resources for the service. Microsoft is just leveraging its licenses in an extremely sensible way. Virtually any business in the same position would do the same thing. Note here that Valve is not in the same position as it doesn't hold any sort of hardware monopoly over the devices that run the games sold on it.

My father used to complain about burritos with too much rice or beans in them because "rice and beans are cheap". But the argument makes no sense - either the burrito is good or it isn't. Its value to you is not necessarily equal to the value of its constituent parts to you let alone the resale value of its constituent parts.

TL;DR: Your refusal is based on a very naive understanding of economics.

The online store is what costs Microsoft money to run and they offer that up for free to Silver members. If you wanna play COD online, you already payed for that when you bought the game, why would you pay Microsoft to play COD? They incur no cost whatsoever from you playing COD.

Your burrito analogy doesn't make sense, a better analogy would be your dad buying a burrito from Taco Burrito King (real place) and also paying Taco Bell $1 for some reason; Taco Bell did not have anything to do with the making of that burrito yet you are giving them money, why?

Everything I'm about to say is completely factual.

Well, if it's completely factual, where are your sources?

Peer-to-peer networking (how online gaming works):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer

Here's the Xbox live Silver/Gold breakdown:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_live

Tell me which Gold services aren't FREE everywhere else.

Holy cow actual sources! I am amazed! To bad you can just put whatever pleases you on wikipedia.

What information for those pages do you think is not factual.

And, yeah, I just went and edited those wiki pages to make my point seem right.[/sarcasm]