XBOX Live is a rip-off and overhyped?

[Doctor Fugue]

For one specific game there are hopefully no differences between versions. My point is that the standardization across all games is generally a good thing (among all the other good things). We can compare it to free PC services until the end of time, but it will never change the fact that XBL costs money to use.

Anyway, the discussion about XBL being a rip-off is old and boring...I sometimes forget not to post in these kinds of threads. Money and worthiness and affordability all mean different things to different people. I choose to spend money on many things people would consider a waste. Like my Star Wars toilet paper.

[Droid party]

Halo or GTA4

well there is your problem.

Hmmm. You may be on to something.

[nickfil]

Like my Star Wars toilet paper.

wiping your ass with jar jar is not a waste.

[Niode]

To reinforce the good Doctor's point. The standardised server structure of Live lends itself to a much higher quality of online gaming than that of a non-centralised structure AKA the PSN.

Online play on the PS2 sucked balls. I thought it would be great. No subscription fee. Online play on a console. Awesome! That's about as far as that feeling went. DNAS didn't play nice with my router, at all. Short of having to turn NAT traversal off just to get it to work properly.

The fact that every single game had their own individual servers meant playing Tony Hawks Underground was a seamless experience and then playing Burnout or any another EA game was an absolutely terrible laggy mess. Now that might be because EA suck. However the fault lies with Sony for not standardising the service properly. Plus having to register every single game with different companies, whoring my email address out multiple times over several games is a major chore. How many of those servers are still going to be on in a couple of years?

Granted PSN is a touch above this but without standardised central servers the service is doomed to suffer from inconsistent quality.

Now the price. Most people think nothing of throwing down £7/8 to play WoW every month. That money goes to pay for servers for one game. That's £84-96 per year. Xbox Live costs £40 a year. That money goes to pay for the servers to host all of those demos, every single xbox live compatible game and all the voice chat functions service wide. Does that seem expensive to you? It doesn't to me.

Now everybody is going to say "but PSN is free", yes that may be, but the quality of the service just isn't in the same league yet. Notice how I said yet. Maybe in a couple of years when Sony have straightened their shit out and can compete with MS - feature and quality wise, we'd have an argument but then, so would MS and a definite rethink of their online strategy is required to take place also. Either they slash the price or offer it for free so that they can compete. For the time being though, MS know that they have a superior service that they know they can charge for and customers will see the value in it. When somebody else offers the same service for free, only then will we see a valid argument about price.

[ZenLogikos]

Get the fuck outta here with the boohoo about XBOX Live's price. It's 14 cents a day. Turn a couple lights off in your house for one extra hour a day - BAM! - free XBOX Live.

[MrPopo]

I like Mario Kart Wii's online support. I have few complaints so far.
Although, I haven't tried doing friend codes yet....

So for Mario Kart Wii, the friend codes are a little annoying to initially set up. However, it has a very nice feature wherin when you join a room and there are people there who haven't traded codes with you, you can do a quick trade with them.

At work we ended up setting up a mailing list that emails/text messages everyone (about half have blackberries, the other don't) when someone sends an email to the list, so that we can quickly get a bunch of people up for Mario Kart. It's a lot of fun.

Get the fuck outta here with the boohoo about XBOX Live's price. It's 14 cents a day. Turn a couple lights off in your house for one extra hour a day - BAM! - free XBOX Live.
Get the fuck outta here with the boohoo about XBOX Live's price. It's 14 cents a day. Turn a couple lights off in your house for one extra hour a day - BAM! - free XBOX Live.

This is the common rebuttal I see about Live's cost. Now, I can't speak for everyone, but at least in my case, the cost is not prohibitive. I spend $4 a day on my morning smoothie, another $10 on lunch. I'm pretty sure I can scrape up another $40 over the year. However, the problem is not the magnitude of the cost. My problem is that there is a cost at all. In MY OPINION, Live does not give me any features worth paying for. Now, I personally consider the PC to still be the best multiplayer platform, as you either have companies like Blizzard who run a Battle.net style service, or you have people who just set up a Linux box to run a dedicated server, and the game will have a browser. Since PC companies have figured out how to have a quality matchmaking service without charging the consumer, I see no reason for Live to charge for it.

Yes, I'll agree that since Live supports all the archetecture, it CAN be better than the PSN. Going back to the SC4 example again, I have never had a problem finding people to play against, and did not experience lag that wasn't caused by my opponent. I've had similar good luck with the matchmaking in Rock Band. I can't speak for first person shooters, because they belong on PCs, goddammit. And in my opinion, the only reason that the games on PS3 might have a worse online experience is due to developer laziness, and we shouldn't encourage that by buying into Live.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

There may be some light in the dark as far as Xbox Live goes because recently Games for Windows Live just became free, including cross platform play, so mabe you will see a price drop or something soon. Idk im just rambling.

[Niode]

My problem is that there is a cost at all. In MY OPINION, Live does not give me any features worth paying for. Now, I personally consider the PC to still be the best multiplayer platform, as you either have companies like Blizzard who run a Battle.net style service, or you have people who just set up a Linux box to run a dedicated server, and the game will have a browser. Since PC companies have figured out how to have a quality matchmaking service without charging the consumer, I see no reason for Live to charge for it.

That's on PC though, an open system. If a company were to charge for it people would find a work around. E.G., private servers for games like WoW etc. Besides there's plenty of companies that make a lot of money from dedicated server hosting for games like Counter Strike. There's always going to be free alternatives on PC because it can exist.

A console on the other hand is a closed system. You have to play by MS' rules. You have no choice but to use the service you are given. Now on consoles there's no competitors for online service for one particular console. The competitors are other console manufacturer's closed system. Likewise there is no alternative for them. Now when you are offering more content and a superior service for a particular closed system they have you by the balls. You either pay them or you have no service. Put it this way, they could charge a helluva lot more.

Now where this gets complicated is that there are services out there that provide online multiplayer on games. It's called port tunnelling. Xlink Kai offers this. It only works on games that support LAN mode. It also requires quite a bit of technical knowledge and a router that supports the service.

Think about cable TV. You could watch terrestrial TV over the airwaves for free (Illegal in the UK, I don't know about the US, we have to pay a TV licence to watch TV, if we are caught without paying the licence we get fined £1000 or a prison sentence). OR you could download TV programs from the internet. This is something that the vast majority aren't willing to do. It's either too much hassle or is simply out of their technical knowledge. So despite the fact that you can get the same content for free on the internet people still pay for the service because it's convenient.

That's the main reason why people pay xbox live. It's convenient. It's one username for all games. All their friends are there in any game. You can see who's playing what, you can talk to anyone regardless of what game they're playing and you can jump into any game with your friends whenever you want (as long as you have the game their playing of course). That is something that just isn't available on other consoles right now and that amount of convenience is worth paying for. All I end up doing when I play PSN is wishing for the same features I take for granted all the time on the xbox live service.

[gennss]

i use silver membership because i don't play online unles its ffxi, otherwise its likely worth the price not expensive at all.

[RackGaki]

Think about cable TV. You could watch terrestrial TV over the airwaves for free (Illegal in the UK, I don't know about the US, we have to pay a TV licence to watch TV, if we are caught without paying the licence we get fined £1000 or a prison sentence). OR you could download TV programs from the internet.

When I first heard that folks in the UK had to get a license to watch television, I was quite dumbfounded. Here, the major broadcast networks all flow through the air free to everyone, though the vast majority of American TV viewers pay for a cable or satellite service.

And dear, do you folks pay. "A colour TV Licence costs £139.50. A black and white TV Licence costs £47.00." To pay that every year would cause riots in America, save for the fact that rioting would require the obese to get off the couch and engage in an outdoor activity.