Poll: Should Xbox Silver have Multiplayer?

[lostzombies.com]

Snip

Laggy, lack of competent tech suport, games not supported online as well and this

The only difference is that XBL has cross game voice chat and PSn has cross game text chat.

seriously I spend most of my time talking to 7 other on different games, why would I want to text 7 people? what year do you live in 1998?

£2 a month to be in full voice/video contact with all my friends is a huge selling point

 

[Hisshiss]

It seems like this argument is less about whether silver should have multiplayer, and more about if microsoft should be charging for anything at all, since there isnt much use to gold if you could do multiplayer anyways.

And as far as that argument goes..well of course an xbox gamer will be happy not spending that extra 10 bucks a month, but telling a company to stop charging money for their wares just isnt going to work, if you cant afford it or just arent willing to pay, your gonna have to just stop using xbox multiplayer, and since the 360 seems to be doing fine, that suggests that enough people are willing to pay for it.

Now on the other end of my feelings towards this, I don't think its horrible that we have to pay for gold, but I really dont believe Im being given what I payed for since, as you said, most online is totally free. Microsoft claims that the cost stems from all the added features, netflix, zune, facebook, all that crap. So the issue I have with the 360 is this, what does that 10 dollars really pay for when dealing with people who have say..a friggin computer they can do all that other stuff on? Multiplayer server strength is fucked, all the communication and party systems are somewhat equally fucked , It would just be nice if they spent less of their time adding worthless ghetto versions of perfectly functional computer features, and spent more time adding GAME related things to my GAMING console.

 

[Fusioncode9]

60$ a year isn't that bad, but now that 1 vs 100 has been cancelled I don' see what perks we get.

 

[Lord Honk]

wasn't there this huge fit about the halo servers being shut down after dunno how many years? Yeah, gold membership, that's money well spent. Excuse me while I go enjoy me a game of Starcraft 1, where MP still runs after 12 years.

Seriously, the pricetag on the games is what keeps me from getting a console, I get the same (if not better) MP experience with a PC. Come on, even the "elaborate" and pushed-up battle.net 2.0 doesn't charge me extra. Not to mention that Games for Windows Live is and will remain free (for the time being), with the same perks as the xbox system. I can even chat with my xbox pals for christ's sake.

 

[marcooos]

See the thing is you can all argue for a freebie like good little communists but as has been mentioned so many times it's £2 a month and even if it was more i wouldn't particularly mind i know there are more free alternatives but I will continue to pay because i enjoy the service, it's £2 a month and i know it none of u ppl arguing for a handout will be on there

 

[Delusibeta]

See the thing is you can all argue for a freebie like good little communists but as has been mentioned so many times it's £2 a month and even if it was more i wouldn't particularly mind i know there are more free alternatives but I will continue to pay because i enjoy the service, it's £2 a month and i know it none of u ppl arguing for a handout will be on there

Largely because it's not worth £40/year.

 

[Tdc2182]

I personally think everything in life should be free, so I would say yes if this was a perfect world.

But in reality, the money that Microsoft makes off of Gold subscriptions and all the fancy little pieces really does go into what makes it the best easy to use and visually appealing console home system in the market today, its hard for me to truthfully say that.

Should it be a price of 60 dollars to play for a year?

Hell no

 

[chronobreak]

Nobody is making you pay for it. If you want to play online, then pay, but if you don't, then you can always play games like Fallout New Vegas or Bioshock or one of the many, many other single player games that are available.

Well, of course I have a choice. If I had a choice between free online multiplayer or paying $8-10 dollars a month for it, I would rather have it for free.

 

[IamSofaKingRaw]

Laggy, lack of competent tech suport, games not supported online(WTF?) as well and this

WTF? Games lag on XBL just as they do on PSN. I play MW2 at my friends house a lot and it lags just as much as it does on my ps3. I never heard of XBL magically making every XBL gamer have excellent connection. Not all games have servers (amazing eh?) and MS doesn't host games on servers its up to the game devs. This is a strawman argument. My s3 games don't lag on games that have dedicated servers (like Killzone 2) and games that don't (like MW2) do lag. IDK what games aren't supported online and one of people's main complaints about PSN is the frequent updates. IDK where you got the idea that there is a lack of support.

seriously I spend most of my time talking to 7 other on different games, why would I want to text 7 people? what year do you live in 1998? £2 a month to be in full voice/video(PS3 has video chat) contact with all my friends is a huge selling point.

You make it seem as if text chat is never useful over voice chat. If I'm playing a different game online than my buddies their discussion about what just happened to them would be confusing to me b/c I wasn't there. If I ask for them to explain it to me I'd have to listen to them while trying to focus on the game I'm trying to win(b/c I'm not a casual type gamer, I play to win). I'd just end up not hearing most of what their saying and have to ask for the joke or whatever again. OR, in a text chat I can simply press the HOME button, be taken to the chat I'm in and read the comments left by my friends or the others in the chat party.

I honestly don't see a difference between the two services. You pay to communicate with your friends and play online I pay nothing to communicate with my friends and play online.

 

[AmayaOnnaOtaku]

NO, that's what Gold is for.

In life you get what you pay for.

Paying for an online service = tech support, regular updates, improving service, server upkeep etc

Steam is free and does all of that and more - much of it better, too.

OT: Yes, of course. I've bought the game, I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to play the other half of it.

Plus the crazy as hell sales steam has on games compared to the same 360 game. Between this and paying for free downloadable content I am becoming a PC elitist

 

[WOPR]

If silver had multiplayer too, what would be the point of gold?

Early betas
Early demos
Prize opportunities

stuff like that (which PS3 plus does)

 

[WOPR]

After having both XBL and PSN I can definitely say in my account XBL is just a bunch of stuff I don't need. PSN is equal in performance for most games I have seen, there's nothing worth an extra $60 a year on XBL that I don't already get for free on PSN. I would say free multiplayer silver and make your customers very happy!

Only my 2 cents.

it would boost Xbox sales that's for sure

 

[Timbydude]

I have a PS3 and an Xbox, and it seems that the service I pay for is infinitely better.

PS3 online play is horrendously laggy, nobody has headsets, and it's an overall more annoying experience than Xbox Live. For the price of a single game per year, paying for an online service is not outlandish.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I don't get why people pay Microsoft money to play online because it's just plain bullshit. Microsoft has to pay for the upkeep of servers on their first party titles I would assume, but very few, if any, Microsoft first party games use dedicated servers in the first place, and 1 of the players in the game is the host so the bandwidth costs are all on the ISP of the host. The game servers just collect and track the player stats and that's all. And paying Microsoft money to play a 3rd party title online is basically the equivalent of bat-shit, insane crazy in my opinion as Microsoft has no expenses whatsoever when people play CoD or Bad Company online. Just tell me one difference between playing CoD on the 360 and PS3. I don't understand cross-game chat whatsoever, I don't wanna be talking to my friends when I'm playing a different game, and the only reason I would talk to them while playing the same game is just for teamwork purposes. I talk to my friends when we hang out together.

PS3 online play is horrendously laggy, nobody has headsets, and it's an overall more annoying experience than Xbox Live. For the price of a single game per year, paying for an online service is not outlandish.

How is the PS3 laggier? One of the players in whatever game you are playing is the host; the laggy-ness of the game is dependent on the player who is the host, not Sony or Microsoft. Very few games use servers as dedicated hosts, it's not like playing CoD on the PS3 is using Sony's servers and playing CoD on the 360 is using Microsoft's servers. And, so what if less PS3 users have headsets as to get a decent online experience you have to mute all the assholes anyways. Actually, most PS3 users do have a headset because you can use any bluetooth headset on the PS3 and almost everyone has at least one bluetooth headset nowadays, which they probably got for free with their cell phone.

 

[thenamelessloser]

Don't care about multiplayer, but I would like the demos to be able to be downloaded at the same time as gold membership. I don't get why they would want to postpone people being able to play demos in the first place since they are tools of marketing.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Now that "silver" is set to technically no longer exist, I would actually be surprised if we don't see a new level called "silver" at some point in the future that does include multiplayer play. Of course, the new silver would cost money (just less than gold) but would include multiplayer play and maybe a couple other basic features.

 

[Nouw]

But if we didn't pay, the quality would slide. This is reality so that would never happen and it shouldn't. Also, the old games should have free multiplayer.

I think you should be able to Multiplayer, but for the older titles.

Can i ask? What is the point of Silver anyway? :S is just for Demo's and stuff?

It's the default. You get nothing at all.

 

[Wintermoot]

yes but the whole concept of paying for online without using ANY OTHER EQUIPMENT BESIDES THE SYSTEM is pretty fucking greedy wich is also why some people spell Microsoft like this: Micro$oft and also the reason why I only play singleplayer and local multiplayer games on it

You might benefit from actually, say, learning how to use grammar properly. You'd come off as slightly less of an arrogant prick.

If you don't like paying for online multiplayer, nobody's forcing you.

Perhaps you'd rather buy a PS3 -- until fairly recently, Sony didn't care at all about monitoring or keeping their online services up and running. They had no incentive, they weren't charging for it.

It's not that greedy. Perhaps you'd forgotten that they have to pay the moderators (both online and for the Xbox.com Forums), the developers (who churn out system and dashboard updates), the people who maintain the servers (online and forums), beta testers (who act as quality control before anything goes online), the people who come up with videos (like Xbox 101 and behind-the-scenes previews, etc.).

Yeah, your $60/year goes straight into Bill Gates' pockets. [/sarcasm]

but what about the profit they make from sold systems and games? shouldnt that cover all those costs?