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[Havok]

QUOTE(johnnyrico @ Jul 23 2008, 10:11 PM)

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.

Actually they do prevent us from doing that by requiring an extremely low ping.  Its something that I am 100% positive was done to kill Xlink Kai/XBConnect

[unistyle]

QUOTE(Chancer @ Jul 23 2008, 09:42 PM)

As long as millions of people still keep paying.

exactly.. and why would anyone make something free when millions are willing to pay for it?  if it wasn't worth the money people wouldn't pay, but since it is, people do pay for it.. i believe this process is called.. um.. business.

[iceman72]

Personally I am sick of this same discussion every few months or so. It's a shame that people compare the crap Sony and Nintendo put out to the full Xbox Live experience. It's like comparing a bike to a car. Yes both get you there but you would much rather drive. One thing people don't get is that everything in life is not free. Some times it doesn't pay to pay less or get free for that matter. The Wii online service is a joke and should not even be considered an online service. Not to mention the poor excuse for the PS3 online experience. Hmm how about tossing a headset into a game and then watching it drop to it's knees? I have fiber and it still runs slow as hell. I am happy to pay my little $49 bucks a year and would never complain. Not to mention that today I won the Microsoft GTA IV 8th place price and they added another year to my live experience!!!! Those contest do actually pay to change your gamer pic

[steveju]

QUOTE(johnnyrico @ Jul 24 2008, 02:11 AM)

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

Microsoft is leeching off europeans and aussies because they can. Not because of oil prices or the US economy.

QUOTE(johnnyrico @ Jul 24 2008, 02:11 AM)

if the dollar were higher than european currencies MS sure as hell would raise the prices for europeans.

Well, obviously. Don't see what this has to do with anything. The USD will not be passing Euro anytime soon. btw. AUD is not an European currency.

[bojangles1988]

thay are never going to stop charging for live. if you havent noticed microsoft charges for eveything. pictures to use next to your name, picture for your background, maps, everything its never going to stop

[Morlok8k]

damn... its $4 a month for unlimited access to all of your xbox and xbox360 games.  yes, it would be nice if it was free, but $4?  stop complaining people.  

hell, most of the people complaining are high-schoolers (and middle schoolers, and other losers) with no jobs, and i dont want to play with them online anyways.  especially in halo.  kids should not play halo (they should not even have access to it) for many reasons, but on live they annoy the hell out of me.


the federal minimum wage is $5.85. (most states are higher) if you worked ONE hour a week, after taxes you would have more than enough money to pay for xbox live.  get a job.  it's real easy if you tell them you'll do all the bitch work (like cleaning) no one else wants to do a couple hours a week.

hell, if you dont want to even do that just stand on the side of a freeway offramp holding a cardboard sign while wearing the tattered clothes you already own, and youll get $4 pretty quickly... maybe some food too!  do that once or twice a month and you'll be able to pay for xbox live easially!

[Altima NEO]

I dont mind paying for live, but its silly that we have to pay for themes and gamer pics, etc. Pretty ridiculous. Would be nice if we got more perks than the competition.

[AcidPenguiN]

QUOTE(tristanx @ Jul 24 2008, 01:43 AM)

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.

unfortunately that is not a realistic scenario. Any big business of sound mind/management would go with the paid advertisement, but they'd be doing that on top of of their current pay service. The ability to create 2 revenue streams from one without any additional expense is any businessman's wet dream.

[1nsan3]

well... ive played on the sony playstion online... always has sucked very laggy.. yes live has its lags at times but not really at all. 50 a year is a bit high ya hell i would $75.00 a year and then have all arcades andmaybe some old xbox 1 games movies netflix etc all free. I think that would be a good deal... kinda like an all in one price.... but m$ is like the oil companys.... live will be free when gas drops at around $1.50 a gallon.


Note: 1 thing i hate seeing on live... is peoples mottos.." xbox live should be free"  
ya know a system mommy bought when ya see that...

[Chancer]

QUOTE

well... ive played on the sony playstion online... always has sucked very laggy..

Which PS3 games have you had lag problems with?
The only problem I have come upon is with the shitty PES2008.
How do you have your PS3 connected?
Could be the  connection.
Granted live has more features and stuff, but I will not renew my subscription again. The PS3 works fine in multiplayer live and I use it everyday.. and it is free at present.

[MrFish]

QUOTE(Havok @ Jul 24 2008, 03:32 AM)

Actually they do prevent us from doing that by requiring an extremely low ping.  Its something that I am 100% positive was done to kill Xlink Kai/XBConnect

Yeah, that's a much more plausible explanation than wanting to deliver LAN-quality gameplay over something that appears to be a LAN.

[halcyonx12]

Not very long, it's free on other platforms... and they just switched PC Live over to free for all, so it's not long until 360 follows suit.

[johnnyrico]

QUOTE(halcyonx12 @ Jul 25 2008, 01:09 AM)

Not very long, it's free on other platforms... and they just switched PC Live over to free for all, so it's not long until 360 follows suit.

that's because PC live failed massively because it's not universal and there are dozens of similair systems out there that give the same basic functionality for free( Xfire, Steam(though Steam is DRM with a community function),...) and only a few titles support it(Halo2vista failed because of Vista only and the PC live being partially commercial, the player has already shelled out money for their overpriced OS and hardware that runs it, they don't wanna pay for a subscribtion.)
on the Xbox, MS has the monopoly on community systems, everybody has the same system.

[signal-to-noise-ratio]

QUOTE(CollinstheClown @ Jul 23 2008, 06:23 PM)

Dedicated servers would make it worth the cost. As of right now that $50 a year gets nothing more then online play, which sucks.
I thought you could only use one card per account.
-CollinstheClown

Dedicated servers would get rid of standying once and for all.

QUOTE(Reaper527 @ Jul 23 2008, 07:16 PM)

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.

QUOTE(MrFish @ Jul 23 2008, 07:28 PM)

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.

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?

QUOTE(logicbomb.de @ Jul 23 2008, 08:34 PM)

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.

EA does have their own servers for the actual matches. Never actually seen standbying.
Downside is over time EA turns off their old servers try to play online Tiger Wodds Pga Tour 2005.
MS would be able to cover the cost wiith Live fees and keep games up.  Blizzard is able to do it.
Where as most other Live games pass the actual match to someone's 360 in the match.  
Regional servers would help eliminate lag from round the world ping. IE the problems the aussies sometimes have.

QUOTE(logicbomb.de @ Jul 23 2008, 08:34 PM)

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.

QUOTE(tristanx @ Jul 23 2008, 08:43 PM)

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.

I do not mind paying for Live. I would even pay $150 a year IF

1. MS used Dedicated servers for actual games.

2. Got rid of ALL  the ads on the dashboard. It reminds me of a computer with a popup issue from early 2000s.

If MS did BOTH of these things I would pay up to $175 a year to play.

[HotKnife420]

QUOTE(ping8781 @ Jul 24 2008, 12:00 AM)

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.

 
 Nice, but you've already paid your ISP for your bandwidth. The vast majority of 360 titles do not use dedicated servers (which is why people always bitch about host advantage). The free demos you got are free. The purpose of a demo is for you to evaluate it, and hopefully like it enough to purchase the full version. Developers have been doing this for ages. Paying for a demo is like paying for "bottled tap water".

QUOTE(ping8781 @ Jul 24 2008, 12:00 AM)

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

 No. They're free because their pricing ideology was based off PCs' online presence. People are used to multiplayer gaming for free, especially if they're using their own bandwidth. Companies that have dedicated servers for games provide these servers at no additional charge because it's part of the gaming experience you've paid for by buying the game.

 Let's also not forget that the only advertisements you see on the PSN are in the store, while LIVE puts about 2 on each dashboard blade.

QUOTE(ping8781 @ Jul 24 2008, 12:00 AM)

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.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

 Voice & video chat is quite possible on the PS3. With fw 2.41, you can add in-game messaging & chat to that list.  You could've gotten a video or voice chat up with your friends long ago on the PS3, you just needed to be in the dashboard to access chat functionality. Invites have always been supported by games with multiplayer functionality, so I don't know what you've been smoking... can I hit that?

QUOTE(ping8781 @ Jul 24 2008, 12:00 AM)

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.

 I've played some MGO and Unreal, and plenty of COD4 online on the PS3. No problems; tons of fun playing.

$50 a year *IS* cheap.
$50 a year for Xbox LIVE Gold memberships is overpriced, however, by exactly $50.

QUOTE(tristanx @ Jul 24 2008, 01:43 AM)

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

paid advertisment.

 Uh... they do that already. There's like 5 ad's throughout your dashboard blades you can't get rid of (short of disconnecting, that is).

QUOTE(johnnyrico @ Jul 24 2008, 03:11 AM)

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.

 It *is* their matchmaking system, but the DLC is available to Silver members for free already.

 The content is made by independent developers, as well as MS devs, depending on which content (ie: Gears of War maps were made by Epic, not somebody at MS).

QUOTE(Morlok8k @ Jul 24 2008, 07:52 AM)

damn... its $4 a month for unlimited access to all of your xbox and xbox360 games.  yes, it would be nice if it was free, but $4?  stop complaining people.  

 That's like telling someone not to go to the doctor because the pain isn't unbearable (you only coughed up a little blood...) Of course, the medical industry has been accused many times of being more interested in "treatments" than "cures" out of business interests, which is oddly similar to the XBL "get whatever money you can from everyone" type of mentality.