Microsoft Marketing Man Explains Xbox Live Rate Hike

[Jumplion]

I just do not get the appeal of LIVE, in all honesty. From where I stand, I can get the same experience for free with all the same features.

Essentially, with LIVE you pay $60 to access the content on your $60 game that you bought. You are being forced to pay extra money to access an integral part of a game that should be free.

But wait! You also get Netflix, Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm, and ESPN! You know, the things that are completely free on the PC [sup](and Ps3, if you're that extreme with it)[/sup] and that you must pay to have access to for whatever reason.

And lest we forget, few is any of those features are for anyone outside the US.

From what I've read before, it's not even a good infrastrucutre, it's all Peer2Peer networking or whatever and it's incredibly cheap and pretty crappy in comparison to dedicated servers.

I'm sorry if I'm coming off as overly aggressive here (lolzerpants, PS3 fanboy, hurdur), but I really don't see any reason to pay for LIVE. But you've got to give Microsoft credit, they know how to dress up their excuses for spiking the prices to make it sound like they're the one's who are getting gypped.

 

[hooksashands]

I actually prefer paying a yearly subscription. It's the closest thing to quality control Xbox has. Most working adults have a steady income, so 60 dollars in the sink isn't much.

The only people who seem mad about it are screaming, jobless 11-year-olds. Which suits me just fine.

 

[thedeathscythe]

So let us choose what content to want.

Drop Netflix, avatars, music, and all those crappy indie apps.

Theres my $10 differance in price.

ESPN thing I'll absolutely never use. Getting stuff first...does that even matter? I mean, it sucks to get it later but if we get it at the same time, I'm still getting it on [insert date here]; only difference is I can't brag about it later to people that have to wait a month.

Maybe if he said inflation as one of the reasons, I'd see it their way.

 

[SelectivelyEvil13]

I just do not get the appeal of LIVE, in all honesty. From where I stand, I can get the same experience for free with all the same features.

Essentially, with LIVE you pay $60 to access the content on your $60 game that you bought. You are being forced to pay extra money to access an integral part of a game that should be free.

But wait! You also get Netflix, Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm, and ESPN! You know, the things that are completely free on the PC [sup](and Ps3, if you're that extreme with it)[/sup] and that you must pay to have access to for whatever reason.

And lest we forget, few is any of those features are for anyone outside the US.

From what I've read before, it's not even a good infrastrucutre, it's all Peer2Peer networking or whatever and it's incredibly cheap and pretty crappy in comparison to dedicated servers.

I'm sorry if I'm coming off as overly aggressive here (lolzerpants, PS3 fanboy, hurdur), but I really don't see any reason to pay for LIVE. But you've got to give Microsoft credit, they know how to dress up their excuses for spiking the prices to make it sound like they're the one's who are getting gypped.

The "appeal," or at least what I felt when I only had a 360, was that Live meant your $60 copy of Halo or Gears was not entirely in vain. It's literally just "Yay I can play with my friends!" which is actually a great thing. But as you said, it's not something that screams "$60 fee!" considering the other available options. As I said earlier, it comes down to value, which is also severely hurt by the lack of available choices for plans based on a consumer's personal taste or, pathetic as it is, a person's home country.

The actual infrastructure was never a widely impressive facet of Xbox Live from what I saw. Halo 3 had an overall smooth multiplayer experience, as did Modern Warfare. Microsoft's "man' bringing up Gears of War is a joke, however, as the gameplay was abysmal when lag came into play due to its poorly implemented system for online connection and hosting.
His argument fall flat with those two titles as he brings up a point worthy of reiteration: those games are it. He's touting the two "big" AAA titles on the 360 that really have just so much appeal. If you're not crazy about the future soldier/space marine game types, Live's primary use for online play is typically cross-platform titles[footnote]While Fable II/III offer co-op, that's a very hard sell for an additional $60 a year[/footnote] (and extra "features" that not everyone even uses to begin with!).

Live has its moments of great entertainment, but it isn't really Live, but the interaction with friends and actually being able to use that X% of the game previously locked. As for the rest of the absurdly wasteful features being added by no one's request, that's how Microsoft is keeping Live "fresh." They obviously can't monitor the service and virtually exile the abominable twats polluting Live as that's one less customer paying $60 per year. They can't get rid of lag, guarantee good connection, or other online exploits entirely. They simply cannot create a "perfect" service because that's life. But Microsoft can provide inane bullet-point features to enhance the perceptible value for a service banking on consumers with no other online options like a PC or PS3 for gaming needs.

 

[Roander]

I'm more comfortable with "we upped our price because we have to maintain our infrastructure" than "we upped our price so we could give you espn". At least I'm actually using the infrastructure once in a while. I don't suppose anyone has seen a breakdown of what share of the subscription costs go to which components of the service? I'm a little worried that this is going to be like cable tv all over again.

 

[kouriichi]

So let us choose what content to want.

Drop Netflix, avatars, music, and all those crappy indie apps.

Theres my $10 differance in price.

ESPN thing I'll absolutely never use. Getting stuff first...does that even matter? I mean, it sucks to get it later but if we get it at the same time, I'm still getting it on [insert date here]; only difference is I can't brag about it later to people that have to wait a month.

Maybe if he said inflation as one of the reasons, I'd see it their way.

Same here. But its obvious inflation isnt the problem if theyer excuse is, "We have alot of stuff most gamers dont want".

 

[Estocavio]

And this is why im not updating my subscription - My $10,00 could go to much better places.

Im not sure if im serious or not, but thats about the value i put on it.

 

[Chewster]

growing infrastructure

Which is what exactly?

ongoing influx of new content

Which most people don't want and would have voted down if given the choice. After all, most of it can be done on PC and other consoles for free.

sheer size of its user base

See this makes no sense, the more customers they have the more each customer must pay. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Well, if alot of people drop Live then maybe we can get the price back down. That is what they are saying.

I'm with you. I don't pay for Live usually, since I don't have much time to play it and I only have a handful of friends that play online anyway and I'll be fucked if I start in with the random spazztics that inhabit Live. I guess I am already boycotting them. So fuck this shit. They can take their lies and nonsense and shove it up their collective asses because I can play games online on my PC for zilcho. These marketing assholes can piss right off.

And the people who defend this crap annoy me to no fucking end. Here is a PROTIP: Microsoft is a huge corporation and as such, does not care about you or I in any real way and they already almost have more money than any other entity on this bloody planet. They can afford to keep the price low for their loyal fans, but they choose not to, because, like all corporations, they are endlessly greedy. Don't defend corporations. They most certainly won't ever defend you.

 

[Negatempest]

Now in 2002, it was strictly multiplayer gaming. Now we get those Call of Duty map packs before anybody else does. We've got Gears and Halo, of course, as exclusives. We continue to get exclusives on the service as well. And we've gone from 400,000 members in our first year to 25 million," he said. "So during that time, we've definitely got to fund it, and we want to add more and more and more. ESPN is a great example. No extra charge for Xbox Live Gold members. But we want to continue to bring that content in. We also want to continue to innovate on all dimensions, whether it's social, entertainment, or gaming. So there you go.

See, this very qoute has a certain "hole" in it.

So if we take this quote to be "fact" considering it's coming from Craig Davison himself, the money that we pay Micrsoft for accessing Xbox live is used to pay for limited time exclusives (GTA4 and MW2 to just name a few) and isn't coming from the money Microsoft gets from selling games but it is coming from the customer who pays for LIVE? So the customers have no decision on what exclusives he/she wants, if any, and Microsoft does? At the same time Microsoft can increase the price of accessing LIVE based on the fact that Microsoft uses XBOX LIVE funds for "exlusives" we neither want or now about?

I'll be honest here, if it wasn't for Netflix being on the Xbox right now, I wouldn't pay for LIVE anymore.

How about this instead. With the money you guys are getting from XBOX LIVE why not add a section that promotes user based mods for games? Mods are more than just altering the look or gameplay of a game. It allows a game player to personalize their gaming experience to a form that even if the game was linear chances are there would almost be no one else who experienced the game the same way as others. I now have a gaming PC where I got user based Mods and I can tell you, with the time spent to get the game to look and play to my taste I have no thoughts of EVER turning it in to gamestop. I put ALOT of time to find the right mods and when people do that, put time and effort into something, it becomes more personal and less likely to trade in.

Putting money into a customer run program that encourages the paying customer to keep their product/video game? That would be a great idea wouldn't it? Oh wait, you put the money into stuff we do not want or even know about.....great....

 

[goldenheart323]

growing infrastructure

Which is what exactly?

ongoing influx of new content

Which most people don't want and would have voted down if given the choice. After all, most of it can be done on PC and other consoles for free.

sheer size of its user base

See this makes no sense, the more customers they have the more each customer must pay. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Well, if alot of people drop Live then maybe we can get the price back down. That is what they are saying.

Excellently put. I don't bother with online gaming, so I'm more of an impartial observer. I can totally understand the anger over this. It's not the extra cost that bothers everyone, it's the total BS reasons MS provides for the hike. Plus, they're saying "Look at all these great things we've added!" while the gaming masses are replying "We don't give a flying rat's rear end about those things! We don't want to pay for them!!!"

On a side note, I'd be ecstatic if all multiplayer games went back to being able to play multiplayer ON A SINGLE CONSOLE!!! I'm sick of this crap of not being able to play a multiplayer game with a friend at my house.

 

[samaugsch]

Is anyone else's screen only showing a bunch of dollar signs?

Seems to happen every time I open a topic regarding Microsoft.

Even when you view it from this topic?