Analyst Says Live Price Increase Won't Hurt Microsoft

[Gasaraki]

Are they fucking retarded?
I almost know jack-shit about marketting and I KNOW that if you increase the price of something barely anyone can afford in the first place, all you'll do is get less money, you LOWER the price, that way more people buy it, and it all adds up to a managable price. Increasing it will lower the amount of consumers, meaning less money, meaning they'll grow bankrupt in the Xbox branch. So I GUESS anyone who just read this paragraph could answer it.

The thing is though, people can afford the current price, and the price increase is minimal. A 1 year subscription card for xbox live is like, what, 60$? Do the math and that's 5$ a month, not exactly outrageous. And this price change doesn't even affect year long subscriptions, only per month ones where it adds about a dollar. No one's gonna unsubscribe because of a dollar...

EDIT:

Are they fucking retarded?
I almost know jack-shit about marketting and I KNOW that if you increase the price of something barely anyone can afford in the first place, all you'll do is get less money, you LOWER the price, that way more people buy it, and it all adds up to a managable price. Increasing it will lower the amount of consumers, meaning less money, meaning they'll grow bankrupt in the Xbox branch. So I GUESS anyone who just read this paragraph could answer it.

People can barely afford live? If you can afford a $60 game, you can afford the $50 year long subscription or however much it is.
I really doubt their main customer base is people barely making ends meet, having to decide between groceries or online gaming. I would guess it's people with jobs and extra money to blow.

Now kids paying for it out of their allowance might have difficulty, but that would be a rather stupid business model. And, frankly, if everyone under 18 were banned from Live, fully half, if not more, of the complaints about live would go away

 

[Treblaine]

Noooo. Zero Dollars for Online, as you have already paid for Peer-to-peer online when you paid for the console and then paid your ISP to allow machines to connect to each other via the internet.

I'll give them their due, that is one part of the service that would take money to run, the master servers that list every connected and sort out matches.

WHAT! Do you know NOTHING about the internet? Or are you merely making ASSUMPTIONS to rationalise your subscription?

Those "master servers" take no more computational power nor manpower to run than the servers that hosting a popular website! XBL cost Microsoft PITTENCE to run!

You know what DOES cost them money:
-Customer support phone lines for their consoles that has a +40% failure/fatal error rate (they earn it back by putting that support on a premium rate line).
-Replacing millions upon millions of consoles that fail within 3 years.
-spending millions of dollars on merely TIMED exclusives

Think about the INCREDIBLE server load that youtube takes up with literally hundreds of millions of videos, many in HD, streamed in real time. They don't charge $60 per year, they charge NOTHING!

Xbox 360 is the EXCEPTION yet they do nothing exceptional... and very little exclusives multiplayer games to even accept this exploitation. Halo 3* and Gears of war 2 are not enough reason to pay now $60 per year.

(ODST was just halo 3 multiplayer)

 

[John Funk]

Frankly, if PSN charged money, maybe it wouldn't suck so hard.

It's goddamn $10 a year. Do you go to Starbucks once in a while? Cut back on two Starbucks trips. There, you're golden. I cannot believe people are whining about this.

(Oh please, you didn't expect this to not get my attention, did you?)

Now that's a tad bit biased for a mod, dontchyathink?

What makes PSN "suck so hard" for you? Personally it's been great for me, rarely logs me out and has been mostly consistent with it's connection, and rarely any screaming at me from 12-year-olds. Just what it is for me.

And I find it odd that people are promoting the fact that they'll have to pay more for a service. I don't care what service it is, you don't greet a price increase with "Yay!"

You're ignoring the fact that XBL has been $50 since its inception in 2002, and has stayed at $50 for almost a decade despite Microsoft adding new feature after new feature without actually charging a thing.

PSN has been online for 4-5 years (unless you count PS2 online capabilities, also free barring whatever you needed to connect it), has added new feature after new feature without charging a single thing at all.

And PCs have been online even longer.

Are you (general you) really so spoiled to think that a service that adds features should maintain the same price point at all cost when expenses have increased? Has your cable bill never gone up?

No, I just don't see a reason to pay for what is free for every other system out there.

Features shmetures, I'll just quote myself here to save the time;

I honestly, personally, don't get what makes LIVE worth the money. I don't care if it's just a cent a year, why would I give them my money if I can get just as good, if debatable better, services for free? I don't care about Facebook, Twitter, or Netflix, and especially not the ESPN thingamajig that they were hyping up at E3. It's something called a computer, I'm using it right now. All I care about is the games, and apparantly I have to pay an extra $5 (now $6 depending on the plan) just to access the online portion of it.

EDIT: Not to mention that most of said services are US Only. Europe, Asia, Australia, they get dick all if anything.

And I say this as someone who is primarily (though by no means exclusively) a PC gamer. Get off your high horse.

I'm detecting some hostility here, which is dangerous for a mod.

Slapping down PC elitists isn't hostility, it's heading off something at the pass.

PSN sucks because it's glacial. Seriously. Everything I do on PSN takes at least four times longer than it does on XBL, and I have both my consoles plugged in to the same wireless connection so it sure as hell isn't me. Shank took me six hours to download, and I think I pulled down Jade Empire from XBL in like... twenty minutes? It's also laid out poorly, the sign-in is a pain in the neck, it doesn't have nearly as many useful features as Xbox Live does, the social features are pretty crippled... do you want me to go on?

I support Sony's paid premium PSN provided they improve the overall experience, which has been pretty miserable for me so far.

Am I HAPPY about the price of a service being raised? No. But again, welcome to real life, where things cost money, and it's such a negligible increase that it's not worth crying about.

Noooo. Zero Dollars for Online, as you have already paid for Peer-to-peer online when you paid for the console and then paid your ISP to allow machines to connect to each other via the internet.

Completely neglecting any of the features that Microsoft specifically built into Xbox Live, like parties, how they're integrated with the overall XBL content, and the servers that keep everything running (if only matchmaking, etc), I see. There's a reason why private servers on TF2 are always taking dedications.

Zero dollars for XBL Arcade, as the games aren't given to you for free, you PAY for each one. What kind of store charges you ANY amount just to come in, look around and just the opportunity to pay?!?

...you know you can buy games with just basic free XBL, right? Gold just gets them earlier.

Zero dollars for Facebook and Twitter, as they are not premium services online, they earn their money trough various Byzantine means such as advertising, facebook games and enterprise analysis.

0 + 0 + 0 = $60 (in Microsoft's mind).

Yes, because adapting Facebook and Twitter to an entirely different network requires no manpower or bandwidth and should thus be free.

Frankly, whoever said that Microsoft should charge $50/month for everyone under 18 and $60/year for everyone over 18 was right. It'd solve so many problems.

 

[Treblaine]

Are they fucking retarded?
I almost know jack-shit about marketting and I KNOW that if you increase the price of something barely anyone can afford in the first place, all you'll do is get less money, you LOWER the price, that way more people buy it, and it all adds up to a managable price. Increasing it will lower the amount of consumers, meaning less money, meaning they'll grow bankrupt in the Xbox branch. So I GUESS anyone who just read this paragraph could answer it.

The thing is though, people can afford the current price, and the price increase is minimal. A 1 year subscription card for xbox live is like, what, 60$? Do the math and that's 5$ a month, not exactly outrageous. And this price change doesn't even affect year long subscriptions, only per month ones where it adds about a dollar. No one's gonna unsubscribe because of a dollar...

EDIT:

Are they fucking retarded?
I almost know jack-shit about marketting and I KNOW that if you increase the price of something barely anyone can afford in the first place, all you'll do is get less money, you LOWER the price, that way more people buy it, and it all adds up to a managable price. Increasing it will lower the amount of consumers, meaning less money, meaning they'll grow bankrupt in the Xbox branch. So I GUESS anyone who just read this paragraph could answer it.

People can barely afford live? If you can afford a $60 game, you can afford the $50 year long subscription or however much it is.
I really doubt their main customer base is people barely making ends meet, having to decide between groceries or online gaming. I would guess it's people with jobs and extra money to blow.

Now kids paying for it out of their allowance might have difficulty, but that would be a rather stupid business model. And, frankly, if everyone under 18 were banned from Live, fully half, if not more, of the complaints about live would go away

How would YOU feel about paying say... $1 a month to use The Escapist forums? You know damn well everyone else is getting it for free as it costs so little to run it sustains itself on ads.

The matter of "afford" if taken literally is a semantic distinction which misses the entire point which is a matter of god-damn value... people don't have to be stripped of their last penny to be ripped off. I bet you wouldn't want to pay for something that everyone else gets for free and you know damn well should be free.

Here is the sum total of Xbox 360 exclusives with even worth while online multiplayer component
-Halo 3
-Gears of War 2
-Halo ODST (because that was just Halo 3 and all it's premium DLC)

That is not a massive collection of games that you MUST pay $60 per year to play online.

I think the way Microsoft hopes it goes is:

"Wow Halo 3 campaign was great, I'll pay for online... for now"
*load of multiplatform games come out*
"Well I BETTER play these games on Xbox live or I'll be wasting my subscription"
*Microsoft coasts on 3rd party games multiplayer to justify XBL for half a god damn decade*

Now all of a sudden 5 years in Halo Reach will be only the 2nd exclusive first-person-shooter multiplayer for the system... what the fuck?

If I can't get XBL multiplayer free then I'd really like a "pay as you go" setup like with mobile phones where you can pay say $15 for 30 hours of online play... that's how I'd play those 2 games (soon a third with Reach), not all in one month but on and off over a year, depending on what takes my preference for that day.

 

[Treblaine]

Noooo. Zero Dollars for Online, as you have already paid for Peer-to-peer online when you paid for the console and then paid your ISP to allow machines to connect to each other via the internet.

Completely neglecting any of the features that Microsoft specifically built into Xbox Live, like parties, how they're integrated with the overall XBL content, and the servers that keep everything running (if only matchmaking, etc), I see. There's a reason why private servers on TF2 are always taking dedications.

Zero dollars for XBL Arcade, as the games aren't given to you for free, you PAY for each one. What kind of store charges you ANY amount just to come in, look around and just the opportunity to pay?!?

...you know you can buy games with just basic free XBL, right? Gold just gets them earlier.

Zero dollars for Facebook and Twitter, as they are not premium services online, they earn their money trough various Byzantine means such as advertising, facebook games and enterprise analysis.

0 + 0 + 0 = $60 (in Microsoft's mind).

Yes, because adapting Facebook and Twitter to an entirely different network requires no manpower or bandwidth and should thus be free.

Frankly, whoever said that Microsoft should charge $50/month for everyone under 18 and $60/year for everyone over 18 was right. It'd solve so many problems.

To spite your thick sarcasm the response really IS a simple yes.

Yes, integrating twitter/facebook and ALL THE OTHER CRAP takes no manpower or bandwidth, certainly not on Microsoft's shoulders and certainly not a thousands of a fraction of the cost of $60 or even $5 per year per user. That's not Twitter those, everything else.

Sky Player needs a separate subscription, netflix needs a separate subscription, the ESPN deal is only for Americans who are with the right ISP/Telco (the one that own ESPN or are affliated with it).

Tell you what, why don't Microsoft put all this "extra content" in a separate package from online and sees if anyone buys into it at all?

It's like this scenario
Me: "Excuse me, I'd like to take a glass of water from my own tap (internet)"
Mafia: "that'll be $10 sir."
Me: "what! but I pay the utility bill!"
Mafia: "well you bought this TAP from my associates, but if you pay me $60 I'll stay out your way for a while... say, a year"
me: "Bullshit! now you want $60 out of me"
Mafia: "Ah, but we'll throw in this lovely berry and icecube to go with you glass of water"
me: "but I don't want either of those, and you picked them up outside for free anyway!"
Mafia: "and a shot of kool aid (netfilx/sky)"
Me: "well that's somewhat interesting, I already pay for ko.."
Mafia: "oh no, you still have to pay for the Kool Aid... it's just I will PERMIT you to mix it with your own damn water"

: |

It's a mafioso shakedown! OK, it's not like you're just in the wrong neighbourhood, you just bought the wrong console, and you don't HAVE to use it's online. Before you reply this is an ANALOGY! It is not PERFECT! obviously, any fool can show how XBL is not EXACTLY like the Mafia... what I am saying in limited terms is that it is like it in key principals of operation: they want money for nothing.

Matchmaking service costs virtually nothing to run, it's isn't moving any large volumes of data with low latency for even extended periods of time. Really peer-to-peer works entirely independent of manager serves for so many other services. I guarantee you this very website, escapistmagazine.com, has at least comparable server load to Xbox Live's matchmaking service. The "XBL matchmaking is expensive" is a tech-illiterate rationalisation.

Party chat is nothing but glorified Skype, another free peer-to-peer service. Integration is not a "monthly" costs, it is a one-off job, it should be included with the price of the console as all all other services do.

Comparing XBL to Team Fortress 2 dedicated servers shows your ignorance. If you'd played the game much recently know you can host a game on your own machine just like Halo 3 (only you can actually choose who is the host). But user run dedicated servers are UTTERLY different from anything Xbox Live offers, complete control by the users offers potential only limited by technology, importantly the server (unlike a home based computer/console) is placed deep in the network for lowest possible latency for each user.

I'm not saying Xbox is worthless. I've been playing Halo 3 today in anticipation of Reach but dammit I'm saying it's not worth $60 per year for online multiplayer, not $50 not even $20. There just aren't enough good games to justify it relative to all the other games I can play on other system without having to pay.

Everywhere I see companies saying "only X per month" only monthly contracts are so exploitative of customers these days, it all adds up and you end up paying way more than you intended and you can't back out.

It's easy to justify $60 Xbox Live per year by breaking it down into smaller units of time:

"It's not much, only $5 per month, only 16 cents per day, only 2/3 cent per hour"

Well that goes BOTH ways! $60 per year means buying an Xbox 360 250GB ($300) to use till 2015 when it reaches the "end of it's life" will cost you an additional $300. Bull... SHIT! You can get an amazingly powerful PC for $600? Someone who bought a 360 at launch and paid every year like a good fan will have paid $250 on top of the $400 launch price that put the total cost at $650 up till today.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I'll let you have your opinion on Microsoft and the free-market economy (as if I had a choice), but don't brush off the argument and treat "Microsoft = greedy evil corporation" as a given. I refuse to let you treat that point as a solid truth simply because you have a lousy understanding of... well... everything. It's far from a different debate all together, especially if you or anyone else is claiming quite ignorantly that it's "price gouging" (which it's not...what businesses do during a hurricane...THAT is price gouging). Price gouging is illegal. Are you saying what Microsoft did was illegal? See, this ignorant attitude goes to the core of the issue and why people are so self-righteous over a measly $10.

Next, all you've given me is a pile of opinions of what you think Achievements are doing to gaming... which has nothing to do the cost of the system. Again, you are entitled to your opinions... except the one that supposes it wasn't a serious undertaking. Microsoft put out an edict to EVERY developer that EVERY game on 360 has to have Achievements. Judging by your understanding of economics, it's clear you honestly don't see the money and where it went. I know what a crazy project that must have been at the beginning of this generation.

What Microsoft is doing is not illegal but unnecessary. Every other console online provides more or less a similar function for free. While yes the XBL does have a certain edge to it nothing it has truly justifies having such a high price for a year.

Steam basically does the exact same thing as the xbox - Avatars which in all honesty are basically Mii things from the Wii. So no XBL does nothing amazing enough or unique enough to warrant such a price. If Microsoft had dedicated server support for every single game that would justify a price like this but not what they have. So in short what Microsoft is doing is not illegal in any sense of the word it is just plain scabby as they don't have anything there that really justifies the price.

Right on Achievements here how many achievements are well thought out? Very few of them. Most of them don't even have clever names or anything there unique or even are proper achievements. Half of them you get by playing the game and finishing the story. Finishing every chapter in a game is not something to rant and rave about. Maybe having 1 achievement/ difficulty setting fair enough but not one for every blood chapter or part. The rest of them are completely mundane lists like kill 500 with X or collect Y in Z. If a little creativity and thought went into them they would be much better but as I said the majority are utter dribble.

There are very few achievements that are actually inventive or are actual achievements. One thing that I can consider good achievements are like the ones in L4D2 like the Guardin' Gnome where you are actually given a bit of a challenge. That is an achievement not the shit that most games give. So because of the lack of doing anything out of the ordinary to achieve yes the achievement system was not a massive undertaking it could be done so much better to a much greater affect which is why it is not a massive undertaking in my view. If they had put a full true effort into it then maybe we wouldn't have the half shit pile that we now have today.

Also those are not opinions nor are they facts for everyone about achievements but they do hold true for some cases which is what I was saying. The achievement system on the xbox does breed that attitude in some people. You can say it doesn't as much as you like and that this is my opinion on it. It is a fact that there achievement whores out there and people who judge people by the Gamer Score.

If this system was not in place or done different this would not happen. So yes the achievement system on the 360 does create problems which do decrease the online quality of it that are completely avoidable as people do treat it like a high score board and then an elitist attitude because it. Just look at some people in WoW or anything like that. Some people genuinely think if you have a higher number before or after your name that they are better. If that number was there that would not be a problem.

I actually study Economics in school as subject and this is not my opinion of Capitalism that is what Capitalism is. All Private Enterprise cares about is money as that is why Entrepreneurs invest in something they want to make money using money. That is what Capitalism/Free Market Economy is because of that if they can make more money by doing something they will do it as that is their aim to make money. To say a Private Enterprise company has any other aim than making money is ridiculous. I also never mentioned price gouging what so ever. So you want to accuse me of something accuse me of something I actually said as I have never mentioned Price Gouging once if I wanted to say it was that I would say it was that. So no I would not say I have a bad understanding of Economics.

You want to know my actual Economic opinion on the subject? Well since as I said Microsoft are Private Enterprise I have already said how Private Enterprise acts. That is all Private Enterprise does or want is too make money. Now Microsoft would not make a system of any kind out of the goodness of their hearts if they knew that in some way they would not get any financial return out of it. Another Microsoft knows is that for a lot of people on XBL their demand of the service is Relatively Inelastic and in some cases Perfectly Elastic. So because of this MS knows that an increase in price will not result in a significant loss in subs. Given this information MS knows that they can increase their revenue and profit from XBL by upping the price a little. Now fair dues to them they did keep the service at the same price for years so I can't fault them for that.

What I am saying is their service is not the best value for money and the price increase is not really needed since they do not provide anything unique for extra money that is deserving of it such as MS controlled and funded Dedicated Server support for games. What they have added to Live has mostly been useless crap that has not really improved the overall quality of the gaming of the service. While there has been some improvement not enough to justify the price even as it is.

So there are my non economic anc economic opinions on the matter.

 

[John Funk]

Sorry, but this is bullcrap and a half.

You're ignoring the fact that XBL has been $50 since its inception in 2002, and has stayed at $50 for almost a decade despite Microsoft adding new feature after new feature without actually charging a thing. Are you (general you) really so spoiled to think that a service that adds features should maintain the same price point at all cost when expenses have increased? Has your cable bill never gone up?

And I say this as someone who is primarily (though by no means exclusively) a PC gamer. Get off your high horse.

No what's bullcrap is that people are starting to be comfortable with paying for *rofl* matchmaking and dedicated servers. That's bullcrap. One of the stupidest trends I've seen of late in the gaming industry.

It's not about 'high horse' as you call it, it's about what's been done for what, 20+ years up to the current date? I don't know how old you are John, but I highly doubt someone can forget how long dedicated servers have been part of most games and that only recently, due entirely to Microsoft no less, devs have started to see they may actually be able to charge for such services (Activision and CoD anyone).

What's bullcrap, is the common consumer eats this right up, what's bullcrap is the common consumer helps perpetuate the mythos that we actually NEED someone to provide us WITH servers. Absolutely ridiculous.

Call me an elitist if you so desire, but I was playing on dedicated servers for free, long before XBL was a grease-stain in Microsoft's proverbial pants, and I'll be doing so long after they sell their base on the next insanity they come up with.

As for PSN having crippled Social Networking services, it's a games console, not a cell phone. Last I checked, Social Networking (Twitter, Facebook etc..) is free on PC, and actually made for it too.

Okay, wait a second. Where are you getting dedicated servers at all from my argument? Dedicated servers are completely irrelevant here because while they work well for FPS games like TF2 (and CoD, and Halo, etc), they don't work for every game. Plus, you're ignoring the fact that there are a lot of people who play on consoles because of the convenience, who don't want to deal with the hassle of searching for dedicated servers and making sure everything runs perfectly. They'd much rather just sit down, click "find match," and have it work. You, as a PC gamer, don't want to do that. That's fine; for the most part neither do I (as a PC gamer). But people preferring convenience over complexity is hardly a bad thing.

Your entire argument revolves around ZOMG DEDICATED SERVERS when that has very little to do with the argument at hand. Furthermore, if MS actually did switch to a dedicated server model, how would they be paid for? If MS operated them, that'd be a pretty big expense - there's a reason fan-run servers need to ask for donations to continue to survive - and so they'd be in their right to charge for XBL in the first place. And do you REALLY think they want other people to be asking for money off of their own service? What sort of sane company would do that?

 

[edgeofblade]

You want to know my actual Economic opinion on the subject? Well since as I said Microsoft are Private Enterprise I have already said how Private Enterprise acts. That is all Private Enterprise does or want is too make money. Now Microsoft would not make a system of any kind out of the goodness of their hearts if they knew that in some way they would not get any financial return out of it. Another Microsoft knows is that for a lot of people on XBL their demand of the service is Relatively Inelastic and in some cases Perfectly Elastic. So because of this MS knows that an increase in price will not result in a significant loss in subs. Given this information MS knows that they can increase their revenue and profit from XBL by upping the price a little. Now fair dues to them they did keep the service at the same price for years so I can't fault them for that.

You're probably right about that. I personally expect Microsoft to either back pedal or they will suffer in the more elastic parts of the service, DLC purchases.

 

[ultratog1028]

Nobody will quit. All those talking about petitions and crap are the same kind of people who petitioned things on the internet before. All talk, but in the end they buy it.

now the price is $.16 instead of $.14 a day! Help us!

 

[lee1287]

So i jsut renewed my XBL subscription, for 40 pound. Do i have to payit again this year for the increase? Or just next year?

 

[Gasaraki]

Are they fucking retarded?
I almost know jack-shit about marketting and I KNOW that if you increase the price of something barely anyone can afford in the first place, all you'll do is get less money, you LOWER the price, that way more people buy it, and it all adds up to a managable price. Increasing it will lower the amount of consumers, meaning less money, meaning they'll grow bankrupt in the Xbox branch. So I GUESS anyone who just read this paragraph could answer it.

The thing is though, people can afford the current price, and the price increase is minimal. A 1 year subscription card for xbox live is like, what, 60$? Do the math and that's 5$ a month, not exactly outrageous. And this price change doesn't even affect year long subscriptions, only per month ones where it adds about a dollar. No one's gonna unsubscribe because of a dollar...

EDIT:

Are they fucking retarded?
I almost know jack-shit about marketting and I KNOW that if you increase the price of something barely anyone can afford in the first place, all you'll do is get less money, you LOWER the price, that way more people buy it, and it all adds up to a managable price. Increasing it will lower the amount of consumers, meaning less money, meaning they'll grow bankrupt in the Xbox branch. So I GUESS anyone who just read this paragraph could answer it.

People can barely afford live? If you can afford a $60 game, you can afford the $50 year long subscription or however much it is.
I really doubt their main customer base is people barely making ends meet, having to decide between groceries or online gaming. I would guess it's people with jobs and extra money to blow.

Now kids paying for it out of their allowance might have difficulty, but that would be a rather stupid business model. And, frankly, if everyone under 18 were banned from Live, fully half, if not more, of the complaints about live would go away

How would YOU feel about paying say... $1 a month to use The Escapist forums? You know damn well everyone else is getting it for free as it costs so little to run it sustains itself on ads.
I wouldn't mind. $1 a month would be well worth it, the escapist isn't really the best example though.

The matter of "afford" if taken literally is a semantic distinction which misses the entire point which is a matter of god-damn value... people don't have to be stripped of their last penny to be ripped off. I bet you wouldn't want to pay for something that everyone else gets for free and you know damn well should be free.
Value is an opinion. I, for example, find that being able to talk to 7 other people at the same time while playing a single player game is worth 5$ a month all by itself. If you don't then that's, as I said, your opinion.

Here is the sum total of Xbox 360 exclusives with even worth while online multiplayer component
-Halo 3
-Gears of War 2
-Halo ODST (because that was just Halo 3 and all it's premium DLC)

That is not a massive collection of games that you MUST pay $60 per year to play online.

Well that's a stupid statement. There are 111 xbox360 exclusives and counting, surely there are more than 3 worthwhile games. If you choose to only play 3 multiplayer games then that's your choice, but don't assume that everyone else limits their selection of games to a couple of AAA shooters too.
I think the way Microsoft hopes it goes is:

"Wow Halo 3 campaign was great, I'll pay for online... for now"
If someone only wants to pay "for now" then they can just buy a shorter subscription.
*load of multiplatform games come out*There are exclusives too...
"Well I BETTER play these games on Xbox live or I'll be wasting my subscription"Not everyone also owns a ps3 to play multiplatform games on and even the people who do might prefer to play multiplatform games on xbox 360 due to features such as the aforementioned party chat
*Microsoft coasts on 3rd party games multiplayer to justify XBL for half a god damn decade*lolwut?


Now all of a sudden 5 years in Halo Reach will be only the 2nd exclusive first-person-shooter multiplayer for the system... what the fuck? Again, not everyone plays nothing but shooters, and there are definitely more than 2 exclusive first person shooters for the ones who do.

If I can't get XBL multiplayer free then I'd really like a "pay as you go" setup like with mobile phones where you can pay say $15 for 30 hours of online play... that's how I'd play those 2 games (soon a third with Reach), not all in one month but on and off over a year, depending on what takes my preference for that day.
You do know that you can pay for just one month of xbox live right? And depending on how much you play in that month it can have a much better value than 15$ for 30 hours.

 

[Treblaine]

How would YOU feel about paying say... $1 a month to use The Escapist forums? You know damn well everyone else is getting it for free as it costs so little to run it sustains itself on ads.
I wouldn't mind. $1 a month would be well worth it, the escapist isn't really the best example though.

The matter of "afford" if taken literally is a semantic distinction which misses the entire point which is a matter of god-damn value... people don't have to be stripped of their last penny to be ripped off. I bet you wouldn't want to pay for something that everyone else gets for free and you know damn well should be free.
Value is an opinion. I, for example, find that being able to talk to 7 other people at the same time while playing a single player game is worth 5$ a month all by itself. If you don't then that's, as I said, your opinion.

Here is the sum total of Xbox 360 exclusives with even worth while online multiplayer component
-Halo 3
-Gears of War 2
-Halo ODST (because that was just Halo 3 and all it's premium DLC)

That is not a massive collection of games that you MUST pay $60 per year to play online.

Well that's a stupid statement. There are 111 xbox360 exclusives and counting, surely there are more than 3 worthwhile games. If you choose to only play 3 multiplayer games then that's your choice, but don't assume that everyone else limits their selection of games to a couple of AAA shooters too.
I think the way Microsoft hopes it goes is:

"Wow Halo 3 campaign was great, I'll pay for online... for now"
If someone only wants to pay "for now" then they can just buy a shorter subscription.
*load of multiplatform games come out*There are exclusives too...
"Well I BETTER play these games on Xbox live or I'll be wasting my subscription"Not everyone also owns a ps3 to play multiplatform games on and even the people who do might prefer to play multiplatform games on xbox 360 due to features such as the aforementioned party chat
*Microsoft coasts on 3rd party games multiplayer to justify XBL for half a god damn decade*lolwut?


Now all of a sudden 5 years in Halo Reach will be only the 2nd exclusive first-person-shooter multiplayer for the system... what the fuck? Again, not everyone plays nothing but shooters, and there are definitely more than 2 exclusive first person shooters for the ones who do.

If I can't get XBL multiplayer free then I'd really like a "pay as you go" setup like with mobile phones where you can pay say $15 for 30 hours of online play... that's how I'd play those 2 games (soon a third with Reach), not all in one month but on and off over a year, depending on what takes my preference for that day.
You do know that you can pay for just one month of xbox live right? And depending on how much you play in that month it can have a much better value than 15$ for 30 hours.

You're a fool or a liar. Bullshit you'd be OK if you had to pay for The Escapist and others didn't have to, nobody would use this if they had to pay for it up front.

The rationalisation via excessive fisking is terrible here
-Ah the "opinion fallacy" to dismiss counter argument.
-Skype. Is. Free. And open to ANYONE!
-I've seen those lists, 90% of those 111 Xbox Exclusives are either not exclusive (PC or other non-PS3 release) or are so shit they are not worthy as shiny coasters. Like Too Human... that's not a reason to go with 360.
-shorter subscriptions are even worse ripoffs, I don't want to limit my gaming to one-month, I game on and off by my fancy.
-"there are exclusives too" Nope. 360 has no games.

"Again, not everyone plays nothing but shooters, and there are definitely more than 2 exclusive first person shooters for the ones who do."

Moving beyond your lame attempt at a straw man argument of "people don't ONLY plays shooters " (my point is they ARE hugely popular), lets address the "only 2 exclusive FPS's"

And yes, I am VERY serious, Only the xbox 360 has only Two EXCLUSIVE FPS GAMES WITH AN ONLINE MULTIPLAYER! (which was what I originally said) So viva Pinata or Fable 2 don't count. I just think you are drinking so deeply on the Microsoft kool-aid that you are skimming over my sentences and interpreting the way that suits your prejudice. You merely ASSUME there are a lot of exclusives but there aren't.

Name me a Game other than Halo 3, ODST or Reach - even going right into 2011 - that are:
-100% platform exclusive
-a first person shooter
-Also good
(There are none)

Because I can list SEVEN for PS3 by the same criteria;
-Resistance 1, 2 & 3
-Killzone 1, 2 & 3
-MAG

PC has 23 Exclusive by the same criteria since 2005:
-ArmA
-Battlefield 2
-Day of Defeat: Source
-Battlefield 2142
-Red Orchestra
-Painkiller Overdose
-TAG
-STALKER Trilogy
-Crysis
-Crysis Warhead
-Killing Floor
-Shattered Horizon
-Cryostasis
-Penumbra Trilogy
-Amnesia
-Nuclear Dawn
-Heroes of Stalingrad
-Natural Selection 2
-Sanctum
-not counting the scores of total conversion mods like Insurgency.

That's the fact of the matter: 360 has no games. Not compared to the competition.

And that would be fine only charging for online to give exclusive multiplayer access to such a limited selection... bullshit!

 

[Ashhearth]

*sighs* $10 bucks a month and people go and lose their heads over it? Wow how cheap can people be I mean if I didn't do my fast food runs twice a week that I do for band and crap I would have the extra money right there. Granted adding features that we don't even use and yet still have to pay for is annoying but it's not like it's the end of the world.

 

[Jumplion]

Slapping down PC elitists isn't hostility, it's heading off something at the pass.

Why is it elitist to expect something for free on every other system?

PSN sucks because it's glacial. Seriously. Everything I do on PSN takes at least four times longer than it does on XBL, and I have both my consoles plugged in to the same wireless connection so it sure as hell isn't me. Shank took me six hours to download, and I think I pulled down Jade Empire from XBL in like... twenty minutes? It's also laid out poorly, the sign-in is a pain in the neck, it doesn't have nearly as many useful features as Xbox Live does, the social features are pretty crippled... do you want me to go on?

First of all, most if not all of that depends on your internet connection. It took me only 30 minutes to download Shank, while my friend who had LIVE (stress the "had") frequently disconnected him and took forever just to download an update for a game.

Second of all, what features does PSN not have that LIVE does? And these have to be features that cannot be found anywhere else for free. So we've got party chat and...well, I don't know. I honestly want to know what other features LIVE has that PSN does not, completely sincere here.

Facebook, Netflix, Twitter, ESPN, Last.fm, etc... can all be found on the computer, most for free. Why would I want to pay for features that I can get for free?

Infact, PSN offers Facebook and Netflix for free already. If you're desperate, you can also use the console browser for Twitter and such.

EDIT: Thirdly, you do realize you can just automatically sign in, right? Even then, what's so hard about putting in your e-mail and password to log in? I'm sure LIVE does that to, right?

I support Sony's paid premium PSN provided they improve the overall experience, which has been pretty miserable for me so far.

...PS+ has barely been out for a month, give them some time, dude.

Am I HAPPY about the price of a service being raised? No. But again, welcome to real life, where things cost money, and it's such a negligible increase that it's not worth crying about.

So we, as customers, should just sit back and go "Oh, well it's just business, they have to make money, let's pay up!"? No, we're their customers, what we say goes, or at least it should go.

Again, why is it "whining" and "complaining" about a price raise for a service that should be free? I recall a few articles saying that LIVE was going to eventually have to lower prices to stay competitive with PSN and the like, though god knows if I can find them.

Overall, I find this a little disturbing to be quite honest. As a Mod, we look up to you guys as impartial observers, or at least "fair and just". Going around saying "PSN sucks" and "Stop complaining/whining" kind of paints you as pretty biased here. Not saying that Mods can't have opinions, just that using obsoletes like this doesn't really put you in a good light.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

You want to know my actual Economic opinion on the subject? Well since as I said Microsoft are Private Enterprise I have already said how Private Enterprise acts. That is all Private Enterprise does or want is too make money. Now Microsoft would not make a system of any kind out of the goodness of their hearts if they knew that in some way they would not get any financial return out of it. Another Microsoft knows is that for a lot of people on XBL their demand of the service is Relatively Inelastic and in some cases Perfectly Elastic. So because of this MS knows that an increase in price will not result in a significant loss in subs. Given this information MS knows that they can increase their revenue and profit from XBL by upping the price a little. Now fair dues to them they did keep the service at the same price for years so I can't fault them for that.

You're probably right about that. I personally expect Microsoft to either back pedal or they will suffer in the more elastic parts of the service, DLC purchases.

Well unfortunately I don't think that will happen. I think they might lower the price of DLC to keep this steadier flow of income. It's something that no one can really stop unless there was a boycott which won't happen. Overall it is MS's service ultimately they can do what they like with it and they will do so unless people stop paying for it.

I just don't think that they should charge for actually playing games online since XBL is a mostly P2P run service when it comes to gaming but that's just me. I don't people should pay for P2P gaming the extras maybe but not for that. Ultimately I don't really have much more to say on the subject other than I hope people do not accept that it is ok to pay for something which doesn't really cost much. With this I am just refering to the mostly P2P gaming system. Either way it will show MS how much of a proper solid fanbase that they actually have. I know $10 isn't much but it really show them how much they can lose if they up the sub so hopefully this isn't a tester for more possible price hikes.