Thanks for sharing and NOT being a sony fanboy (no offence)eddierigs said:
AGREED :-]Paragon Fury said:
Why is Microsoft not giving Xbox Live free?
- Thread starter Hellblazer12
- Start date
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Because unlike sony, MS does things like having all of their Live tech support agents in local countries. They try (note the word try) to provide better service, as well as making sure games/systems get updated. This may not be for everyone, hell I mainly play on my PC if I want multiplayer as I dislike multiplayer on all of the consoles.
Thank you for you view, what you said is true and you don't seem to lean towards neither xbox or ps3 in your argumentGhengis John said:
It exists because I was wondering why they keep charging although,even if they're making millions, they know that people tend to lean more towards the PS3 due to their feebobisnowhere said:
I'm not going to defend or make it seem nice - fact is they do it so they can make money. Heck we all make money, this is their way of making a constant stream of it. More golden mansions for them, less money for the poor which is us - nobody loses right? Yeah...
It's why I stick to PC - I can even get the majority of most games free or from a torrent if i REALLY want them that badly - Not that I would do that of course *cough cough* - I think I'll stick to my free sandvich on tf2 PC than a paid for Halo 3 kid on xbox 360.
(not to be rude or anything, but Xbox Live SHOULD be free in my opinion)
It's why I stick to PC - I can even get the majority of most games free or from a torrent if i REALLY want them that badly - Not that I would do that of course *cough cough* - I think I'll stick to my free sandvich on tf2 PC than a paid for Halo 3 kid on xbox 360.
(not to be rude or anything, but Xbox Live SHOULD be free in my opinion)
Wow,Honestly,thank you for your enormous opinion on this topic and thanks for taking the time to type all of that. Also I am now sure this view as it has been(somewhat partially) expressed by a few others because its coming from a game retailer of courseTzatziki3301 said:YesHellblazer12 said:
Yes
No
and No.
To explain:
Yes it is a money-making venture, but you are right in that at least part of that money goes into ensuring it is a better service, runs smoothly, and has good content. In all honesty, having played several MMOs where you are paying a much higher subscription rate just for that one game, paying a yearly fee to play any Xbox Live multiplayer title is, in the grand scheme of things, great value for money.
Yes, having compared PSN to Live on my PS3 and my Xbox I can say that I am happy to pay for the (much better) service. I'm not saying PSN is crappy, and I'm not going to go into the (European) server stability issues on PS3 compared to Xbox versions of games like CoDBlops and B:BC2. The discounted rates for download games, and the content you get as a Gold subscriber I can happily say is 'worth it' in my opinion, especially for something that is cheaper than a years subscription to a games magazine and has articles and features (and videos) that are almost more informative more often and often less biased than many format specific magazines.
However, saying Xbox 'lost customers' to PS3 because PSN doesn't cost is a statement that may hold true for a very tiny minority, but it doesn't hold true for many dedicated gamers, especially online ones. To be honest, given the price-tag differences for the consoles, the added extra of Live doesn't even make the 250GB Xbox more than a 160GB PS3 (at least, in Europe, if they have closer parity in the US, discount this, and yes, that is for a console WITHOUT kinect included in the box), so it doesn't even boil down to cost and being able to afford the service. When a year's subscription costs as much, or sometimes less, than 1 full-price game, most hardcore gamers eat the cost up without blinking.
So maybe a few kids or younger teenagers without jobs or low allowances might miss-out on Live because they can't afford it (I see more than enough in my shop asking for the 3 month pre-pay cards to know this does happen), but you have to realise that the main thing that will make them choose one service over the other is peer pressure. Most younger consumers play what their friends play, so if two or three kids in a school year jump ship to PSN from Live and are up the social ladder enough, then sure, they will influence others to do the same, and they are just as likely to switch back later on too, usually influenced by what games come out on what console.
Saying this though, flying in the face of 'anti-payment' protestors, Xbox has talked and rumoured a few times about reviewing Live and how much it costs the customer. These days it is much cheaper to get online than it was when the console first launched, and with the service well established, Microsoft could possibly turn around and start discounting the Live service subscription as they no longer need as much to keep it running to the same standard. We've already seen many deals and packages for renewing your subscription cheaper, especially aimed at families post Kinect launch, where you get more for your money such as full download games or MS Points, or 20% off a year. Similar in many ways to the kind of deals and offers mobile phone companies advertise for their services.
Lastly, again, I disagree with the 'cost' of Live being a NEGATIVE when discussing console wars, but only because the service is, on the whole, better. Yes, cost is a factor for actually weighing up which one to buy personally, but when comparing the experience of a game, or games machine, as a whole, cost doesn't factor in. World of Warcraft is enjoyed by millions, but in order to play Cataclysm you have to buy ALL the expansions, so do you turn around and say that Cataclysm is bad because it costs the most? Or do you instead take it for its content, leaving individuals to decide if they can afford to buy it and play it? Naturally you look at Cataclysm for what it brings to the world, be you a new player or one well versed with the WoW game world.
Basically, PSN basic is as good a game download platform as Steam, or iTunes App store or Live, but in order to get a lot of what Live offers you have to subscribe to the premium service. Likewise, Steam and App store are little more than catalogues, App store especially. In terms of play-support and communication, and even just the front-end for it, Live trumps PSN and has done for a few years now, based on ease of use and seemlessness. One only needs to listen in to the amount of people talking on a PS3 online game versus the amount of chat on a 360 one on average to know that one system is much more integrated with its online features than the other. From personal experience (i.e, selling them to customers) more people who want good online matches and games go Xbox, while those who want to play 3D and Blu-ray go PS3.
Of course, those peope who can easily afford a 3D TV and the movies and the glasses and the rest, likely have an Xbox on a different telly that they use to massacre their mates on MW2 with!
-Tzatziki: Voice of the Specialist Games Retailer-
.But, let me explain my troubles involving the cost issue.Where I live,things tend to be a highly overpriced, especially games and electronics. For example: A Xbox 360 60GB Pro console costs $2000. Based on my example, you would expect games to be Largely overpriced too.Well,you would be right,a single game in my country costs $500 and a 1 month Live membership - $60,3 month Live membership - $120 and a 12 month membership - $300. If you don't believe me then so be it, its the truth anyway. So if I were to buy a Xbox 360 60GB Pro console,three games and an additional controller (this is my current situation), the total cost would be $3800 (a controller costs $300). After this,because I am still attending school and have to pay for all of this with savings,I would not want to spend an Additional $300 a year.All of this plus the additional hassle of buying and shipping it from the US to try to get it at a cheaper price.You of course had no way of knowing all of this but I hope my explanation partially clears up why my thread was made because having free internet service would also be a huge relief(PS3). Though I still like my Xbox more 
I believe it's because, as the great PT Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute". Seriously, why pay for internet service twice? Sure, XBL is quite cheap, and if I owned a 360 and could just pay a XBL subscription to use the limited internet browsing, Netflix, etc. capabilities without also paying Comcast for internet service, I'd think Live was great. However, I have to pay a monthly fee for internet, have a PC and PS3 with free online services for my games, and therefore will never pay for something like Live. It's one of the prime reasons I'll probably avoid that console, especially with so many games now being dependent on their multiplayer and downloads/patches. Finally, I own Left 4 Dead 2 on PC, and I haven't had to pay a penny for any of the new DLC. Until Live allows me access to things like Red Dead's Undead Nightmare expansion for free, I'll avoid Microsoft's console.
This is exactly it. The reason microsoft charge for xbox live is because they have determined that people are willing to pay for it. It has nothing to do with the (negligible) cost of hosting the servers. I don't see steam, PSN or even windows-update charging subscriptions and two of those services have far more content to host and therefore data transferred through them than LIVE.Icehearted said:
No doubt microsoft are very aware of the whole "the paid option is better quality" instinct people have as well. From my own experiences, xbox live is inferior to PSN[footnote]Inferior in that it performs poorly in the following fields: lag time, accessibility (no standard wireless card on the xbox is a dick move), p2p match-up time and p2p region matching (as an Australian player, I don't want to be put in a game consisting of poms and yanks, global spanning pings are not quick).[/footnote] Despite this, despite even many of my friends having had the exact same experiences as me, a handful of them still blindly insist that the xbox service is generally superior (because it's a paid). This is no coincidences, it's clever marketing, which is baffling because windows have consistently demonstrating atrocious product support and marketing for their mobile and recent operating system software...