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[MrFish]

QUOTE(CollinstheClown @ Jul 23 2008, 11:23 PM)

I thought you could only use one card per account.
-CollinstheClown

I don't understand your question.

QUOTE(spinr34 @ Jul 23 2008, 11:33 PM)

why does it seem that all of the articles complaining about xbox live pricing are written by people in the UK?

Because, if you're dumb enough to buy retail, LIVE costs $45 a year in the states, and £40 a year in the UK. That's twice as much. If LIVE cost $90 a year, the US press would be complaining too.

The consoles, the games, and the DLC are also overpriced, but they're also region-locked so you can't just grey-import them. Rock Band, for instance, was met with rapturous applause in the US, and then six months later with indifference and whinging in the UK, because (yet again) it was late and cost twice as much, despite having a shorter trip from China.

[ping8781]

I have no problem paying for Live at all, I think that it is good value to be honest, I play online at least once a week and you get all the free demos and stuff as well.

The reason Sony and Nintendo services are free is because they are useless. They don't have a patch on Microsoft's service.

For a start you can't even get proper voice chat on PS3 online, there are no proper invites or messaging, I actually use my 360 to talk to my friends if we want to play on PS3, we sit in a game lobby on 360 and play on PS3 for GT5 or F1 thats because Sony is so poor.

Quite frankly Sony should be paying me.

Anyone who moans about paying for live only has to try using Sony online system for a night and Microsft will seem very cheap indeed.

[BasicAir]

XBL is worth more than $100/year for me.

What Chancer says is true, as long as ppl pay, they will continue to charge.

But really, why would they quit charging? Obviously, people are NOT going to quit paying. Just because Live for Windows is free doesn't mean anything. It's a completely different business on the PC. People on the PC have never been known to pay to access all online features of their games (except for MMORPG's) so of course it was going to fail.

If Live on 360 was free, it wouldn't be 1/2 as good as it is right now in terms of speed, features, content, etc.

I got a PS3 and it's network is free. That's great beacuse I would never pay for it as I only use my PS3 for Blu-ray. Nintendo still hasn't taken online seriously enough to even begin to think about charging for any type of premium features. Hell, they still barely have any bare-bones features expected for online play.

[andi_06]

QUOTE(JuniorFan @ Jul 24 2008, 08:31 AM)

I thought Live DID have dedicated servers?

MS keeps servers up for games to be played on, however with PSN when the developers stop supporting the games, the servers go down.

There are SOME developers who have their own servers such as EA Games, but most are MS dedicated servers, no?

LOL, no its all user hosted. Using your own bandwidth.

[Reaper527]

QUOTE(JuniorFan @ Jul 23 2008, 06:31 PM)

I thought Live DID have dedicated servers?

MS keeps servers up for games to be played on, however with PSN when the developers stop supporting the games, the servers go down.

There are SOME developers who have their own servers such as EA Games, but most are MS dedicated servers, no?

if i'm understanding the setup correctly, ms has dedicated matchmaking servers, at which point when the game starts it passes the hosting off to the end user.

[MrFish]

QUOTE(Reaper527 @ Jul 24 2008, 12:16 AM)

if i'm understanding the setup correctly, ms has dedicated matchmaking servers, at which point when the game starts it passes the hosting off to the end user.

Which is why TeamFortress is completely unplayable: 'Ooooh, I have a good idea: Let's make a game where you host sixteen players off of one DS Line. And let's not even bother finding the player with the fastest connection and making him the server. Noooo, the host is always the server because that's less effort for us '.

I'm honestly dubious whether they tested the netplay at all, let alone compared it with Halo 3. I think they just went 'Works on our LAN; ship it'. I'd certainly not have wasted my money on it had I known there were no dedicated servers.

[=CHAVEZ=]

Well guys I bought my PS3 precisely because I didn't want to pay for online gaming. I got my PS3 recently and bought Call of Duty 4, and I must say the quality of the service is decent enough for a free service.

Being in Australia means that you will only get a decent ping playing with other Australians, so you will only get decent pings during the afternoon and evening when everybody is home, in the afternoon or morning you get thrown into games with US and European owners and your ping plain stinks. Funnily my friend who has CoD4 for the xbox360 says its the same on xbox live...so he's paying for crappy pings during the day...

Another reason to want free online is this, I got my PS3 for 598 AU$ and I need the built in wireless, an xbox premium plus wireless and live = 450+139+89 = 678 so yeah it really pushed me to get a PS3. I got it with COD4 all in all for 688, so much for the more expensive console...

[Reaper527]

QUOTE(=CHAVEZ= @ Jul 23 2008, 07:38 PM)

Another reason to want free online is this, I got my PS3 for 598 AU$ and I need the built in wireless, an xbox premium plus wireless and live = 450+139+89 = 678 so yeah it really pushed me to get a PS3. I got it with COD4 all in all for 688, so much for the more expensive console...

those prices are vastly inflated because you are using the official microsoft products. there are plenty of cases of people getting live subscription cards cheaper than the dashboard rate.

and as far as the wireless adapter goes, you don't need microsoft's overpriced adapter. you can easily use a linksys adapter that costs half as much and it will work fine. you just have to make sure you get a wireless adapter that plugs in through ethernet and not usb. you also have the option to get a 2nd wireless router and use it as a wireless access point, then run a wire from your 2nd router to your 360 (and any other devices lacking wireless. this is the setup i personally use, and my 2nd router cost $20 US, not sure how that converts into aussie dollars, but i assure you its cheaper than the ms adapter)

[logicbomb.de]

I'm somewhat grateful that in the US the yearly subscription rate hasn't really increased from the $50/year pricepoint since the XBL launch in 2002

but thats almost like saying "thanks for using lubrication."

Either way, I play online at least 5 days out of the week so I'm definitely getting my money's worth.


almost all games are peer-to-peer connect  but Battlefield Bad Company uses EA dedicated mutliplayer servers.

[tristanx]

i can see live becoming free if they do right this:

paid advertisment.

we may hate this but this the only way live could be free and still get the quality you want. imagine a small blade popping up in whatever corner of the screen you want with coke's logo on it? (just thinking of coke makes me sick) what about during loading times. (they'll get slower too... intentionally) new download content... ms can still charge for this.

advertisers would drool over this if it is done right.

[juan_2006]

wow if they made it free i would definitely buy a 360..im sure many would too.

[avatar1976]

QUOTE(linkinworm @ Jul 23 2008, 11:03 PM)

what would be nice is if they had a system where u actualy got a year out of it, asin, it will tally up a years play, or the 5000 hours or what eva a year is befor its up, because sometimes u cant play because for 2 weeks you might have no internet, or you might have school work, or work, any number of reasons could add up to it

Yeah I agree that's how it should be, free would be a bit over the top but if it were x number of hours of play time = 1 year of subscription that would be  far more fair.  At the moment the people who only play on the weekend or whatever are basically paying the way for people who play 24/7.   I know that's not entirely true but you should be able to understand where I'm coming from, I think if you haven't played or even signed into live for a week you should be credited with one week's worth of live.
As someone who travels away from home quite often and only gets to play occasionaly on the weekends it does often seem a little unfair.

[avatar1976]

QUOTE(Reaper527 @ Jul 24 2008, 01:26 AM)

my 2nd router cost $20 US, not sure how that converts into aussie dollars, but i assure you its cheaper than the ms adapter)

$20US ~ $20.81AUD
The Aussie dollar is juggernaut at the moment.
We're still stuffed over by MS though, they still charge double on just about every SKU here in Australia for the 360 consoles.
Xbox Live is $89AUD a year dashboard price, I normally buy the starter kits to offset that injustice a little when they're on sale for around $60AUD.
That's how I keep my live subscription topped up.
Cheapest I ever paid for a live subscription was $20, I don't think the store realised what they were selling was worth nearly a $100AUD still  It was Halo2 bundled with a year's live subscription I think, gave the spare copy of halo2 to my nephew.  
My answer to MS is stop ripping Australians off and I'll stop buying starter kits, I've got like 5 headsets or something now.

(fixed typo)

[deeceefar2]

Closer to the release of the next xbox console, Microsoft will make xbox live free.  I think the price will be worth it for another couple years so long as they keep it up to date and minimize down time.  However I think it would be more valuable to people if they offered dedicated servers, possibly for more per month, and other perks.

The only real problem is the same problem I have with all these online services just like with subscription games.  As the number of people using the service scales so does the profits.  Unfortunately they don't seem to hire more programmers to roll out features faster.  Instead they only hire more administrators as needed and the service begins to stagnate because the programmers they have are stuck fixing scalability issues.  World of Warcraft is a perfect example of this.  You know when blizzard is up to something because the patches take longer and bugs go unfixed. The only way to keep up the growth rate is to keep up the feature production the only way to do that is to increase the number of programmers.

I look at it like this, everyone X number of people buys a developer on the service, let's say 10000.  So that means as more chunks of 10000 people join the service I expect there to be another programmer hired.  Why?  Usually as more people buy a product, production cost goes down and so does the price; that doesn't happen with online services.  As more people subscribe the costs go down, but the service doesn't get any cheaper.  This is why companies like subscriptions.   I would argue if you can't/won't make the service cheaper then you should throw more developers at it.  Ultimately subscriptions are not very consumer friendly and I feel they this is one way to bring it more in balance and also to keep the growth curve up.  Then as you reach the point of ubiquity you move the developers off to new projects or you start letting some go.  This allows you to cut costs thus keeping up the profit.  Then when you are down to the minimum bug management/scalability team size you role the service into your next product offering and tack on the costs.  That is just the way I think this stuff should be managed.

That is my 2 cents on xbox live and subscription services in general.

[johnnyrico]

QUOTE(Nunix @ Jul 24 2008, 12:30 AM)

So long as there are people that think like you, Microsoft will keep charging for live. Why do you try to rationalize the cost of xbox live? Consider this: every other platform is free. We are the only ones who pay to play multiplayer games.

It's YOUR money for the console, YOUR money for the game, YOUR internet connection to host/join games. Microsoft is doing nothing more than putting people together in a server.

then again, it's THEIR matchmaking servers, it's THEIR servers hosting the DLC and updates and it's THEIR optional system.
furthermore, it's THEIR programmers constantly making new features.

now compare that to something like Steam for the PC: sure it's free, but it's basically DRM hiding behind relatively new community features and you MUST be connected to the internet to play 9 out of the 10 steam-based games.

nobody forbids you to use Xlink Kai or XbConnect instead, it's free but you won't have a dedicated matchmaking system and a community service used by every other live user.




mrFish brings up a VERY interesting point indeed, why should europeans pay roughly 1.5x more(and British users 2 times more) than Americans?
what's up with that utter discrimination on Microsoft's part?
Microsoft is leeching off europeans and Aussies and Brits because the US Dollar is at a low rate due to rising fuel prices and another obvious reason, if the dollar were higher than european currencies MS sure as hell would raise the prices for europeans.




Ultimately, for the Xbox department not to end up in red numbers due to the upkeep cost for matchmaking servers and to pay the programmers to fix dashboard bugs and add new features and improvements, they'll have to keep charging or they'll have to turn to in-game ads and advertisement banners in the dashboards.

Honestly, I'd prefer paying a little money rather than be required to watch a cillit bang ad video each time I wanna play game X or Y.