I have an XBOX360 slim. I have less than 30 hours played on it and have had it for over 2 years. I am a gamer and log at least 28hrs a week gaming. I bought the XBOX because I forgot they charged a monthly fee to game online (I impulse buy) I have the money to easily afford the fee, it's the principle of the whole thing. I have a very real issue with paying Microsoft to play games online and am amazed that the gaming community so easily adopted a monthly fee to play games and I want this nonsense to stop. I would love to hear counter-arguments and/or to have someone add to my own. My argument is simple. I have purchased the Console, I have purchased the game, I pay a monthly fee for access to the internet, why do I have to pay Microsoft a monthly fee to play a game with friends?
Ostensibly its because they run voice and matchmaking services, but honestly, the free versions of those that you get on the PC (particularly through Steam) are every bit as good these days. In Microsoft's defense, that wasn't the case when they started the service.
I find the idea of paying for XBox Live equally distasteful, this a significant reason I purchased a PS3 instead.
I've switched to just getting a monthly prepaid card when I want to play MP on Xbox unless I can get a year for $30, i just don't use it enough to justify it, and when I do play MP on XBOX live it tends to only be for a few weeks or so until I move on to a different game.
It's worth noting that they also used to offer a whole bunch of features like Netflix streaming back when that stuff wasn't available everywhere for free (hell, I can stream Netflix through my TELEVISION now). I used to consider LIVE a decent value for the money, but not any more. I cancelled mine a while back and haven't really missed it. I suspect that for the coming generation, Microsoft is going to need to really step up what they offer with LIVE, or stop charging for it.
Yeah, it's a relic. Still, quality of XBL is significantly better than PSN with respect to download speeds.
It is. And the matchmaking is better than what you get on the PS3, and so on. But there's a huge opportunity for Sony to eat Microsoft's lunch in the coming generation by putting together a solid online service and giving it away for free. An opportunity that they might not take because, well, they're Sony. But you never know! The only reason LIVE continues to make money is because there is no serious alternative in the console realm. If that changed, LIVE would be fucked.
Sony is actually going the premium route themselves, but just busting out better premium value, by giving away free games with premium.
Except that it was available for free on PS3 shortly thereafter. MS locking up services like Netflix was rather consumer hostile considering MS provides absolutely nothing to the service in that case.
Yes but I don't need to be a premium member to play multiplayer games online or make use of their match making or voice services. The premium is literally for free or discounted games and a few other perks that have no impact on the experience of any game.
It was quite a while after, because they had an exclusive agreement with Netflix that lasted two years or so, IIRC. At some point Sony was able to let users run a Netflix streamer from a disc, but it was some time before they were allowed to integrate it into the system. I don't disagree on the consumer-hostile front, of course. And today Microsoft not only no longer has the exclusive Netflix streamer, they also don't have the best one. The free Sony one is better, IMHO, as is the one integrated into my AppleTV.
If I was into multiplayer gaming then I don't think I'd mind paying for the matchmaking and voice stuff. What bothers me is that unless I stump up (the admittedly small sum of) €50 per annum, I don't get to use any of the other features that my XBox supports - Netflix, Sky Go, Internet Explorer and so on. That's the consumer-hostile aspect of this as far as I'm concerned. I still get to watch fucking advertisements in the Dashboard though.
Paying for multiplayer is an aberration as far as I'm concerned, but what really nailed the coffin in my never-again polict for LIVE was when I went for one of those offers to pay a reduced fee for one month. It's marketing at it's very simplest, let people try something for cheap for a month and hope they'll get hooked and stay on/forget to cancel. Well, I wanted to cancel. But I couldn't do that online. I could order online but for some reason I couldn't cancel the service online. I had to call a fucking xbox hotline, wait twenty minutes while my call was redirected through call centers, some of them in foreign languages, until I finally was asked to justify why I wanted to cancel the service. Then followed three minutes of bullshit conversation where I in turn asked them to justify wasting my time like this. It is if not the worst customer service I've ever experienced certainly in the top-5.
Oh yeah, it took me months to cancel because of that. They eventually restored the ability to cancel online in Ireland (and possibly the EU, I have a feeling that MS ran afoul of some legislation) which is when I finally did it. I phoned up once and was subjected to a lecture about why I shouldn't cancel that went on so long that I had to hang up (I was in work).
That shit right there was worse than what I experienced, I would have exploded on the phone had they tried that. But, again, a very compelling reason to never give Microsoft any of my money ever again, and letting people know that Microsoft is in the business of scamming their LIVE subscribers.
Yeah, dealing with anything LIVE/Microsoft account-related is like roleplaying Sisyphus. There's another thread down in the Tech forum about MS account woes. You'd think that a company with the money and resources that Microsoft has could figure this shit out, but apparently not. And now they've rolled the whole mess into Windows 8, which really, really wants to be linked to an MS account.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of that policy, I've had to do it with cable providers and other companies, still really sketchy and shady.
I experienced this when I wanted to cancel Gold for my original Xbox. When I came to a situation where I wanted to try a 360 game in multiplayer, I made sure to only use time cards. I am never giving Microsoft my card details again.
I don't mind paying for it. Do I wish I didn't have to? Absolutely. But it's a pretty unobtrusive cost overall (Plenty of chances to get deals on year long cards, I think I've got a few years stocked up by now), and it always works. The only time it doesn't is due to big games, but Halo 4 was a huge game as was CoD and neither one of those had server or matchmaking problems that last as long as other services (WoW, in particular). It sucks, it does, but it's not a deal breaker. It's the cost of one game at it's most expensive, and the quality of the services are unmatched in the same space. PSN has been hacked, constantly updates, is slower, and is less user friendly (At least in my opinion). I own a PS3, and have never played a game seriously over it's online multiplayer. Maybe I'm just weird.
I think the last game to bring XBL down was MW2? It's been a couple years at the very least. I've paid for XBL since Halo 2 I think - but I've never paid full price either. Having a kid has seriously killed my online game playing, but I'm using Netflix a ton :)
I have three devices hooked up to my TV right now that can do Netflix, in addition to the TV itself. Hell, my freaking phone can do Netflix these days. Paying a subscription fee to get Netflix makes no sense whatsoever in 2012. It used to be a nice add-in value for LIVE, but not any more.
To be fair, XBL remains a great service and the best in its class. However, it is kind of an outdated concept, because it isn't the best by nearly as much as it once was. I let my gold subscription lapse in August and I doubt I'll pay for it again.
Also in the States. I think you might even be able to cancel from the Xbox itself now, though I could be wrong on that.
You guys have me thinking, I think the last time I played multiplayer was Mass Effect 3 for a month or so after release. The only think left that is XBox exclusive (relative to things-plugged-into-my-TV) is HBO GO, and I last fired that up.... errr.... Hrm.
We have two XBL Gold subscriptions in our house, and this year alone the amount we have gotten out of Dark Souls justifies the $100. It does seem like a holdover from a different time, though, and I won't be sorry to see it get competition from others.
I only started paying for XBL Gold a few months ago, despite having an X360 for years. I started paying because of a cheap intro offer and also picked up some cheap 3 month cards, plus I was looking for more online movie streaming services and the Xbox was a convenient option. It's okay as a service, but hopefully Xbox drops the paid aspect of it for the next console. However... stats indicate that there are about 40m XBL accounts and at one point about 50% of all XBL accounts were Gold. It's probably less these days, but that's still a good chunk of change for the Xbox division.
They need to do what a lot of MMOs that go Free-to-Play are doing, with my Gold subscription I should get an equal number of Live Points for what I pay. If I'm paying $10 a month, I should get $10 worth of points each month, if I'm doing annual at $50 or $60 or whatever, I should get that much in points when I enter the code. And it would probably result in more points being bought over time, because nothing encourages point purchases like going to buy an 800 point game and seeing you only have 700 points...
I'd be happy with even less than equal. They gave me 40 points on my birthday. Hooray. They also gave me some Halo 4 DLC which was pretty cool.
Microsoft should have started doing a multiplayer-only subscription level at a much cheaper price ages ago, but they've always defended Gold subscriptions as "great value" and have been constantly throwing crap in there to make it sound good on paper. Like IE for Xbox, what a joke that is.
I'm explaining where we have found value in it. Prior to that, the superior (ie voice chat included) RE5 version that we both thousand pointed together was our game of the year, and in between the Gears games and some of the Halos have been favorites. I have the other platforms, my wife prefers the xbox for a variety of reasons, so that's where we made our two console investment.
Yes but saying you found the value in paying for a service because it gave you access to features that are free on any other platform isn't really much of a value. You're paying for something you could have for free. Particularly in the case of Dark Souls where there aren't any lobbies or match making, the experience is entirely contained in the game and is identical across platforms (with the possible exception of community size). That's not to say there aren't reasons to buy an Xbox (thus give you few other options for multiplayer) and the Live experience is certainly better than the equivalent Sony or Nintendo offerings for many titles and that may be worth paying the fee to many. I just don't see how Dark Souls in particular lines up with that position since the unique multiplayer experience doesn't gain anything from Live's implementation and distinguishing features.
I'm fortunate to have a wife that enjoys the same hobby I do, and she prefers to stick with the xbox as her primary gaming platform, so that's what I use for coop games. In the context of having made that decision and gotten a lot out of it over the years, most recently Dark Souls has given us quality online time that makes it easy to appreciate what I get for a nominal charge. I can understand people that cancel because they don't use it, and that could easily happen to me if I didn't have a spouse to game with regularly. I do, so it doesn't. Which reminds me, we also got a lot out of ME3 multiplayer this year, and that was especially nice because we both have far deeper friend lists on the xbox. That's about the extent to which I'm willing to overexplain the synergy between a matter of taste and a matter of utility relative to a marginal cost. As I pointed out initially, I would like to see it become more competitive in one direction or another, but I'm not in a hurry to leave regardless.
The calculus is incredibly fucking simple: I want to play Halo 4 multiplayer. I can only do so by paying for Live. Whether other platforms charge for that service has no relevance whatsoever. PC multiplayer could give out free sexual favors and it would not change the equation.
I don't agree with him, but he was arguing against my specific citation of time spent in Dark Souls coop rather than an xbox exclusive game.
I completely understand having a platform preference. I'm just saying when it comes to Dark Souls the advantages of Live aren't a factor due to Dark Souls unique multiplayer implementation. In your specific case the value comes in playing with your wife which you could do on any platform, Live doesn't add anything in this case. The reason you do play on Live is entirely circumstantial but it isn't enabling anything that you couldn't do on another platform. If you had two PS3s you could play on it and have EXACTLY the same experience. You've made a platform choice and are of course bound to it and I'm sure there are many instances where you guys do get additional value from it, I just don't see Dark Souls being one of those instances.
