Why is Microsoft not giving Xbox Live free?

[RatRace123]

I don't recall hearing they lost a lot of, or any, of their subscribers to PSN's free service. (Which isn't entirely free, they now have a subscription based service as well. I would get it, but I'm not shelling out another 50 bucks when I already do that for Live.)

As an owner of both a PS3 and a 360, I can say that the 360 has the better online service, by far. If we have to pay for the better service, so be it.

 

[Grey_Focks]

honestly, the only differences I notice between XBL and PSN are that XBL has party chat, sometimes gets DLC early, and it's games are less likely to get hacked (try playing CoD4 on PS3, I dare you.)

Other than that...yea, it should probably be free, or at least go back to it's original price of $50 a year. Seriously, NOTHING changed when they hiked the price up, I feel like they just did it because they could. Kinda bullshit, but it's honestly not THAT big of a deal.

 

[PettingZOOPONY]

Because people will pay it, I see better free support on the PC and never had any issue with PSN.

 

[captaincabbage]

Because people will pay for it.

You can harp on the PSN all you like, but Steam does everything Xbox live does and costs $0/ever.

Yeah, pretty much this. It's all that needs to be said.

 

[PettingZOOPONY]

I've never understood how XBL is a good service. There's no community unless you already know people or randomly friend people in games, there's no dedicated servers, the content they put out is godawful (in the UK at least) and it doesn't offer anything you can't get from a dozen other sources on the PC.

I can only assume the people who extol the virtues of XBL have never used a PC.

You just kinda answered your own question xbox live is all in one place you dont have to wonder what chat program people are using on your team.Also you dont see an abundence of hackers like you do in most pc games.Also all players are using the same content so you dont have problems with texture maps working differently and you dont have to wait around for your friends to instal the latest updates all the time because on the 360 if you play the game you have to keep up to date

You just described all the advantages of steam. As for hackers have you not played a console MP FPS in 5 years more hacks are sold to console now than PC.

 

[RyanKaufman]

Because people will pay for it.

You can harp on the PSN all you like, but Steam does everything Xbox live does and costs $0/ever.

You can claim PC is the best which it probably is if done right, but I prefer my 200 dollar game system that is designed for gaming than my 500 dollar PC that if I play too many games on, I need to invest almost another 250+ into.

 

[The Random One]

The reason why Xbox Live arguably a better online service than PSN is because we pay for it. Our money lets Microsoft make improvements to XBL.

That's why even though it costs money, more people are on XBL than PSN. It's an all round better service.

and yet pc gamers have the best service and its costs us even less

Of course. You can also get a meal of the same quality you'd get at a restaurant at home for much less, as long as you can cook. I can't cook, so I'll stick to the consoles.

I wonder if CONSOLE GAMERS ARE BAD COOKS bumper sticks would sell well.

Caption: Liège: lTherec. Not my favourite pretentious French indie title, I still prefer Your Grandmother is Depressing.

 

[Liberaliter]

Because they are a business not a charity.

 

[Azaraxzealot]

I own a Xbox 360 and repeatedly having to pay for a Xbox Live Gold Membership is quite annoying. After a while i started thinking about why Microsoft isn't giving Xbox Live free. Surely its to make more money and the Xbox Live service and benefits is quite worth it but surely they must realize that they lost many costumers to Sony's PS3 due to this and that this is always a major disadvantageous point when used in console wars. I am open to all views and opinions.

most xbox players say "because its higher quality."
ps3 owners say "because xbox players are idiots"

and i say "because they won't."

 

[Lusty]

The real question is; why do people pay for it? Honestly I always thought of it as a massive swindle on Microsoft's part, you get charged to buy a game and then they charge you more to play it. And they don't even really provide anything for that money, P2P networking isn't costing them anything.

You don't have to pay for Games for Windows Live, which is basically the same thing (conceptually at least, I realise it's shit). You also don't have to pay for Steam, or PSN. That's three services that offer the same thing for free and I don't see Valve or Sony going ouot of business any time soon.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

The funniest thing about Xbox Live is the fact that they effectively charge for free services. Netflix, provided you have a membership, costs nothing on the PS3 or a PC. Same with Facebook, ESPN, and any number of additional sites and services. But when you add a free service to a service plan that already costs money, those service providers are going to (very reasonably) want a slice. So Microsoft ends up having to pay licensing fees to those providers, which is fine. But what happens when those licensing fees start adding up? MS raises the price of Live. I mean they have to, right? How else can they afford to license otherwise free services in order to maintain the viability of their service plan?

In a nutshell: because they charge you for something that should be free, it will cost you more money every time they add other "free" stuff to it. Live is only going to get more and more expensive, and the end result is only ever going to approach what PC gamers have had since the beginning: a fully functional online community.

TLDR version: it's a scam. If you truly don't care about how you spend your money, feel free to keep pissing it away. If you can't do without it, they've got you by the short and curlies. Everyone else should ditch it as soon as possible.

 

[RyanKaufman]

Having owned a 360 with LIVE in the past, I can safely say that the only difference I noticed between PSN and LIVE is that I now have an extra $60 in my wallet. I've noticed no difference between the two connectivity wise. None, nada, zero, zilch. I view LIVE as you're really just paying for the content they have, virtually the same content that PC's and PS3's get for free and you're just being suckered into a P2P system.

As many others have said and will continue to say, they know people will buy it, thus they sell it.

Having the friendship of not one but three different PS3 owners who use PSN and having each of them have different internet systems alike, I can tell you that I notice MASSIVE differences.

Playing Halo: Reach; Big Team battle (8v8) and having virtually no lag but a slight delay and a jump now and again, then playing MAG or even Black Ops and having at least 2 seconds of delay at best, and a large skips which result in me walking into a wall for about 10 seconds before I can actually turn around, I'm going with the 360 network being worth the 40-50 dollars I pay a year. I mean, not if one is gonna complain about 4 dollars a month for leagues of quality, then that's their own choice. Making a smarter decision is mine as well.

 

[Azaraxzealot]

Having owned a 360 with LIVE in the past, I can safely say that the only difference I noticed between PSN and LIVE is that I now have an extra $60 in my wallet. I've noticed no difference between the two connectivity wise. None, nada, zero, zilch. I view LIVE as you're really just paying for the content they have, virtually the same content that PC's and PS3's get for free and you're just being suckered into a P2P system.

As many others have said and will continue to say, they know people will buy it, thus they sell it.

well, some have said that the PS3's connectivity quality depends on the quality of your ISP.

so anyone playing on cheap 10 dollar a month internet would see problems while someone playing on 100 dollar a month lightspeed internet would claim there is no problem.

 

[Altanese]

I just wanted to comment on a certain response I've seen several times...

"They charge because they know we'll pay for it."

So everyone who says this is basically whining about how they have to pay money for it, but really no one is making them buy it. I have the free version of Live. I can't play online multiplayer, no, but I get all the same updates for my 360 and the games, and I can still download any DLC I want.

 

[Lord Beautiful]

Because many have shown willingness to pay for it.

 

[Zeterai]

You just kinda answered your own question xbox live is all in one place you dont have to wonder what chat program people are using on your team.Also you dont see an abundence of hackers like you do in most pc games.Also all players are using the same content so you dont have problems with texture maps working differently and you dont have to wait around for your friends to instal the latest updates all the time because on the 360 if you play the game you have to keep up to date

You offend me by your lack of knowledge on this topic. I do not own a 360, nor an Xbox, nor a PS of the second, third, or portable varieties. Yet I'm capable of researching their capacities. Do this in the future before making a blanketing dismissive post, please.


Microsoft makes a fair amount of money from all their licences and console sales and whatnot, but that's spread across their entire corporate empire; things need to pay for themselves whenever possible, and the XBL as a content delivery and licencing system is woefully underequipped to handle running all the myriad services it does offer. Sony learned this themselves, being that they can't rely on such little income to justify a free service.

Now, Steam on the other hand. Steam was built from the ground up as a digital distribution system, with the social aspects entwined later in development. Valve makes huge earnings off selling games in the Steam store, simply because rather than the occasional independant title, entire mainstream games are available at phenomenal download rates, and generally quite cheap through their content system. Their library is quite massive, encompassing games over a decade old in some genres. Add in the earnings from selling Steamworks development packages, and you start to see just how much money Steam actually makes entirely independant of user fees. Hence, you do not have to pay to use the service, despite it incorporating an extensive clan and friends system, offering a unique and customizable homepage to every user, text and voice chat free of charge between users, and working as a launcher for every game in its library as well as any the user decides to manually add. Not to mention VAC support for many online games and free, automatic updates for every game in the library, or the ability to download full copies of all of your games on any computer, anywheres in the world.

So that's why XBL costs money, and why the free PSN is costing Sony money. Neither have a way to pay for their own overhead costs at a reliable rate, meaning charging the consumer is the only way to break even. Put another way; XBL/PSN are social networking services with content delivery added onto them as an afterthought. Steam, the PC equivalent, is a major content delivery system with integrated social networking. One model makes money, the other costs, and if it costs, the consumer has to pay. Simple as that.


Edit; Rewritten to be easier to read. I don't post often here (Count:6), so they best be quality, no?

 

[IamSofaKingRaw]

Having owned a 360 with LIVE in the past, I can safely say that the only difference I noticed between PSN and LIVE is that I now have an extra $60 in my wallet. I've noticed no difference between the two connectivity wise. None, nada, zero, zilch. I view LIVE as you're really just paying for the content they have, virtually the same content that PC's and PS3's get for free and you're just being suckered into a P2P system.

As many others have said and will continue to say, they know people will buy it, thus they sell it.

SHH! You are not helping MS
/s

I too have went from Live to PSN. I had Live for 3 months and there isn't a 'better' community, (BTW what the hell does that mean, other then your friends who is this community?), the services is the same, the games multiplat games lag just as much (but the first party Sony games like KZ2/3, Metal Gear Online, Resistance 1/2, Socom etc. all use dedicated servers and don't lag at ALL) and the games are great for both. I don't see any benefit for playing for Live other than playing the exclusives online, because nothing else justifies its purchase.