What good (or even halfway decent) online game playing services are out there that you don’t have to pay for? Battle.net you pay for, it’s built into the price of Blizzard games. XBox Live could have worked like this, if you only allowed Microsoft games to be played that way.
On top of that, XBL is $4 a month (bought yearly) or $6 a month monthly. That’s half the cost of your standard MMORPG, and you can play DOZENS of games with that single fee.
I can’t believe you’re saying that a crappy service that’s free is better then an excellent one that’s cheap, simply because it’s not free.
But MS does provide all the infrastructure for XBL. It may not require as much an MMORPG, (I’d imagine it might take less to store scores, standings, rankings, and all the ghost racers for PGR2 as well as any downloadable), but they’re still doing it. Which helps justify the 1/2 or 1/3 price comparison to an MMORPG.
Also, Blizzard only hosts play for Blizzard games. Anyone can write a game for the XBox and take advantage of Live (conceding whatever online revenue you were planning on getting).
My point was, it’s silly to be upset that someone is providing a great product for a price. Doubly so when the price is very reasonable and the service is obviously better then competing free services.
Now that I’m thinking about it, if it’s free to play EA sports games online, and EA has to pay for and support their own server farm, how does that make sense when coupled with the loss of sales on the XBox from lack of online play is added in?
Jim, what money are you making off the customers you didn’t want to hand to Microsoft with your current online scheme? I’m not attacking, I honestly don’t know how it all works.
If XBox Live rawks, then people will happily pay their fees. I’m thinking back to Ten and MPlayer and those services that tried to do similar things in the PC world, and eventually went out of business. Would they have been able to make it if they had offered as much service as Live does? I’m not an online fanatic, but Live sounds like someone really did their homework at MS.
I can’t believe you’re saying that a crappy service that’s free is better then an excellent one that’s cheap, simply because it’s not free.
What’s so crappy about playing PC games online? You can play dozens of Xbox Live games? I can play dozens of your dozens with my PC games, and I don’t have to pay $50 a year.
Plenty actually. Sure for shooters you can just grab a server and jump on but Rise of Nations multiplayer blows unless you coordinate outside of the game with people you know. Also, how do you know if I am playing multiplayer Age of Mythology and invite me to play a game of Warcraft 3? The answer is you can’t. Individual multiplayer interfaces for each PC game range from good to poor you never get similar features. Most Live! games support similar features and in all of them you can cross invite people from other games. It is a very slick setup.
I don’t play AoM, but it doesn’t have a messaging interface into which you could type “Hey, want to switch to War3?”[/quote]
No, this isn’t about being in a game with a friend and deciding the both of you are going to go play something else. This is about being in a game of Project Gotham 2 and having your friend hop in to play Top Spin, see that you are playing PGR2 and be able to invite you to play tennis with him.
That’s not what he said, Xaroc. You can message someone from outside the game in AoM while they are playing and ask them to join you for a game of AoM or to meet you outside the game for a different one. It’s just like Live in that respect.
Age of Mythology allows you, via Ensemble Studios Online, to message players whether they are playing or not.
I don’t play AoM, but it doesn’t have a messaging interface into which you could type “Hey, want to switch to War3?”[/quote]
No, this isn’t about being in a game with a friend and deciding the both of you are going to go play something else. This is about being in a game of Project Gotham 2 and having your friend hop in to play Top Spin, see that you are playing PGR2 and be able to invite you to play tennis with him.
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So spur-of-the-moment gaming with friends is what Live offers? It’s a neat feature, assuming that your friend doesn’t actually want to play with you going in, he just thinks of it when he logs on anyway (because if he actually did want to play with you, he’d presumably be able to contact you some other way)… but it’s not worth a monthly fee, even if it’s only $6. Seriously, if that’s the advantage that Live offers over everything else, which is free, you can keep it.
There also the persistance of identity. Your gamertag is unique to your account, so you know that Rorschach Six in PGR2 and Rorschach Six in Top Spin or Crimson Skies are me. All games have a feedback feature so if I’m violating the code of conduct you can send in a complaint in game. Perhaps the combination of the two is the reason I see a lot less griefers in Xbox Live games than I do on the PC (YMMV).
Also all Xbox Live games support voice communication. That’s a requirement so even DDR Ultramix allows you to hear the wheezing and grunting of your online opponent if you wish.
Additionally more games that aren’t even multiplayer have a “Live Aware” capability. So if I’m playing some Prince of Persia and you want to go racing, you can see I’m playing POP and send me an invite even though I’m not “online.”
Personally I think it’s worth the $4.16 a month for services like that and the above.
Maybe it’s just me then. I’ve never seen anybody else use “extarbags” or any variant, so if you ever see that name, you already know it’s me. I only play multplayer games with people I know, or at least kind of know, so I don’t care about the feedback. I don’t care about voice because… I really just don’t. And if I’m playing Dragon Quarter, say, it’s because that’s the game I want to play… the chances of me stopping in favor of an off-the-cuff multiplayer game are slim. So I wouldn’t pay for the right to use any of those features. I guess it’s just a matter of taste.
The Friends list alone is worth the price of admission. Add in extra content and XSN tourneys and it’s a killer service. Just renewed mine for another year.
I didn’t know about that but that is still just within a single game for that game. In Live it is for every game. It is one of many features that makes the service work so well.
