"You don’t have to pay to watch television, but people still subscribe to Cable, Direct TV and now Verizon Fios. You don’t have to pay to listen to the radio, but now people subscribe to satellite radio. My point here is, the PSN and pc’s online service is pretty much like free broadcast networks, and free radio. These are solid services but are currently not giving you that little something extra that money can buy.
http://bg21gamers.com/page1/?p=111


So tell me what do yall think from reading this article? Is it that much of a hub-bub to pay for live when there's many regular services that people get for free but choose to pay for an additional service to run on top of, or in conjuction with. There is some strong points to it, but it's always nice to see a difference of opinion.

It's convenient.

~

But if XBL was free, the Xbox 360 might just make double the profit than they are making now.

You have to think though. If MS isn't making money off XBL, then they wouldn't give a rat's ass about improving it. They wouldn't care anymore. Anyway, $50 a year isn't that bad.

But seeing is how u already bought the console and, I mean sure if the service was free, but the profit they make signing with third party publishers, and they have a service of buying or renting movies, and many TV shows. And the MS points gives them a great deal of money, I mean if you were to make XBL free, their is no chance in the world that ppl might not even buy a PS3 at all. As well as the XBL marketplace, which millions of ppl around the world buy something from there every single day. I mean isn't that enough?

In its current state, Xbox Live! Gold is merely a way for Microsoft to hold the multiplayer facets of games for ransom.

I can't see ANY justification for paying for this service when I can get the same features available for free elsewhere.

Example: Steam is a free service that offers many of the same features on my PC and provides further options in customization and performance. (Has anyone tried playing TF2 on the 360 vs. the PC and noticed a huge disparity in network performance and player number limitations?)

There are no "premium servers" being provided for the price of the Xbox Live! Gold membership and network performance is dismal compared to the PC experience using the exact same connection.

The difference between Xbox Live! Gold and Cable Television in the analogy provided by the quote above is that antenna-based television offers a very limited selection of network-only channels and the quality isn't very reliable in all houses.

Cable Television, though a different form of crook, does offer substantial benefits over antenna-based television and services comparable to it aren't available for free elsewhere.

I'm not one of the crowd who totally justifies paying for XBL (quite the contrary actually) but I do actually have decent reasoning for doing so. XBL is the premiere online network, (aside from the PC, but I'll get into that in a moment anyway) and if you're looking for a good online experience regarding gaming you can't really do any wrong choosing XBL in contrast to the PSN or whatever the hell the Wii uses regarding online play. While I'm not a stranger to PC gaming, I prefer the controller, and the comfort of it being wireless in contrast over a mouse and keyboard with regards to FPSes, so that's my reasoning for playing most on XBL. You also don't have to worry about constantly upgrading for simply 1 or 2 titles like you might on a PC with regards to console gaming, which is another reason that playing FPSes on consoles behooves many people, and is actually a reason as to why many people are turned off by PC gaming from my knowledge with regards to both means of play.

With regards to the actual online experience, I think people love the fact that you'll never really run into game deciding lag with regards to console online play means, as Microsoft or Sony (I presume, regarding the latter) do a great job of minimizing the lag, always booting people who may lag too much, etc. That definitely can't be said for many PC titles played online. While some may consider this a weakness, it's something I think is cooler, and that's the lack of user mods with regards to most titles that are supported by both the PC and 360, and possibly PS3. If I'm entering a game, I want to play the core game, I don't want some esoteric mods which totally cater to the game host and not the person playing the game to completely hinder my gaming experience, and unfortunately that's the case with regards to many PC titles. Something that could also be construed as both a strength and weakness is the fact that you can practically communicate with everyone you meet on games over XBL; to do so on PC games you have to have all your friends in the same game with, using the same vent channel, (or some other obscure app which allow voice chat) among other things... It's just way too inconvenient and complicated, especially for peopel who have lower-grade PCs with not too much RAM; having so many apps up will probably really screw up their game.

Another reason for me being interested in XBL is as I'm really into fighting games. Fighting games have almost no practical value on the PC, and as I live in a hick town within CT, I don't have much prospect for playing too many great people offline either, so that aspect of things really appeals to me.

I don't really understand why persons' whose primary (or especially exclusive) orientation for gaming is (MMO)RPGs would choose to keep paying for XBL. There are so many opportunities for playing that genre on the PC that's totally nonsensical, especially factoring in the fees involved with those games often singularly.

But yeah, otherwise, XBL is a great service, and as long as it's reasonably priced (which I would think almost everyone would view it as such) it's probably going to keep getting bought. Would I like the price to drop, or be made free for that point, MOST DEFINITELY, but is there much practical value in banking (no pun intended) all your hopes for good online play through that thought... Not really.

Well surely someone has SOMETHING else to add; yeah I posted a "wall" but that shouldn't be enough to have everyone abstain from posting ANYTHING else. Unless of course what I'd posted up there is truly irrefutable :-P.

look at the movies and XBLA pages..some games are pricey with MS points...so if you want something you gotta go out and buy it

i think XBL rocks

PSN is free. =/

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"You create the path of which you set by the actions you take forth."