Be Excellent To Each Other

Just been wondering, what exactly are we paying for here? I'm fairly sure online games work on a Peer to Peer basis at no cost to MS for servers, etc. so what the hell are we giving them money for?

At least on PC we can play on nice proper dedicated servers with no lag.

The little sigs we all have that non XBox owners don't. We're special.

Bezzies. I'd rather pay for Live than play for free on a PC, Wii or PS3. Plus it's just so much better integrated than any of the others.

I think it's worth the money, definitely.

Also, for much cheapness.

It's not expensive, and it certainly isn't the first time I've paid for a service that doesn't have a great deal in the way of appreciable costs.

The live service is so well integrated with the whole of 360 gaming, it's well worth the money.

Yeah, but, it's all there anyway. I mean as a Silver member you get everything other than the ability to play online (more or less). Why isn't this free? There's nothing there that justifies the monthly fee. I agree it's a great service, I just don't think it should cost anything. It doesn't cost MS anything to run because it's mainly P2P, and anything that requires a server should be footed by them as a matter of course anyway. We bought their cunting console afterall.

It also stops a lot of twatty kids being able to play online as they can't afford it out of their pocket money.

But that's a bollocks justification for paying money. Just ignore them or play with the bezzies. Which you do anyway.

I'm quite happy to pay money to stop poor people from having fun.

I completely admit that it's a great service, but when you think about it, we really aren't paying for anything. MS are making pure profit from it.

I can live with that for the small monies it costs.

Hookers, for example.

It's probably to offset the fact they were making a loss on the hardware. They'll probably make Live free once they're turning a profit on the boxes.

If you still think that price has anything to do with cost, you're living in a dreamworld. Price is what people are willing to pay, and as people in their hundreds of thousands are willing to pay it, that's the price.

Yeah, okay.

But why are people willing to pay? Why is everyone here so fucking against bad mouthing the costs? Do you genuinely believe MS are going to waver the LIVE fee once they make a profit on hardware? We're talking about fucking Microsoft here.

No, I think people are happy to pay it and don't really give a shit as long as it remains possible to shoot myoptika in the face with bullets and run DBSNappa over.

Mali's right. I'm not against bad-mouthing it, I just don't care. To me it's a pittance for the enjoyment I get out of it.

Yeah, but they seem to be softening in a lot of areas, like OSS, etc. A bit off-topic, but I think that Apple are turning into the new Microsoft.

I don't hate MS nearly as much as I did ten years ago.

You can probably get a free live gold account anyway, I managed to blag one off Microsoft.

I think the central organisation of xbox live must cost at least something. Having microsoft take care of the whole online thing rather than having individual companies like EA handling it is definitely better as it provides a more consistent approach to the whole thing. It's cheaper than any MMO, that's for sure.

Cheaper than hookers, too.

I don't much care "How they do it". I get a superb service for a tiny cost, I don't see the problem.

i agree with jonarob.

They price it just because people are willing to pay for it. I'm not, and i don't think 50€/year for something that was always free everywhere else and without costs (well, DLC and live games mean profit after all) is cheap.

This and the wireless dongle price are the reasons i don't get a a 360. I'd rather get a PS3 when they go down in price.

I don't think they make it free when they turn a profit on the boxes. They maybe can do it when the PS3 offers a similar online experience with no costs.

This is a non-issue: those who are willing to pay for it are doing so and having a ludicrous amount of fun for a small bit of cash; those who aren't are still trying to maintain that their typewriters are valid gaming platforms.

We're all winners in the game of life.

I don't even use Live that much. But I only paid £30 for 13 months... that's £2.31 (ish) a month. I spend more than that on fruit gum (really) so I really don't mind

I can't see that running distributed network and ensuring games work over that network, and providing support to all the manufacturers for use of that network, etc is free, it is going to cost something. Look at Wikipedia, they are quoting £6.5 million a year to run a website which I have to fill in!



Be fair, the wireless dongle is a rip off, but no more than any Apple accessory.


No, and why would they? They are a business. I can see Jonarob's point, that you are getting little from MS for your money, but by all accounts, the PSN is very poor in comparison [sub - please check], why is this?

I just used the network cable that came with the xbox and stuck it in the back of the router.

I'd do that, but my router is on a different floor of the house to my 360. Even though the dongle is a rip-off, it's never given me any grief like a lot of people's wireless bridges.

I moved the router as I was annoyed at having cables trailing everywhere, and the 2 laptops are both wireless, so I got a card for the desktop and now upstairs is cable free. But anyways.

I got the dongle, and it is indeed a rip-off, but it's better than trailing wires between rooms. Were my router in this room, I'd certainly use a wire instead.

Though I got money off my dongle for buying Gears 2 at the same time, or the other way round — I forget. And I got Fable 2 for a tenner for buying an Xbox. Can't complain too badly in the grand scheme on that purchase.

The PSN isn't poor. Its interface is nowhere near as good as the 360's and it doesn't allow cool party stuff (but that's a new feature on LIVE anyway). Playing a game online (like World at War, for example) is exactly the same experience on PSN as it is on LIVE, only it's free. I'll continue to pay for LIVE because I do genuinely think it's great. BUT, it should be free. They must be fucking raking it in from it, and side-by-side, they're offering little more than the PSN. The only realy difference between the two is the bundled headset with the 360 and of course the new party system.

I always assumed they made a loss on hardware but according to article from last year, they've broken even on console sales so far. I'd guess that with their aggressive pricing for the console now though, future profits on the console itself must be looking pretty slim.

Except that components get cheaper to manufacture over time, of course.

Yup. But then you have to factor in all the replacement parts they've needed too.

that's besides the point. You could get a wireless dongle for a pc for peanuts. The problem is that they sell it at that price because people are willing to pay it because the other choice is having cables through the floor. Since most of us have wives it isn't much of a choice.

Myp: Your typewriter/calculator joke is getting stale. Are consoles any different from pc besides the fact of their closed nature? Don't they use the exact same components? Can't i just plug in the pc on a tv and play on the couch? Didn't you used an Amiga? Was that also a typewriter? Do you like fried fish?

I love fried fish. Am I allowed to use abacus next time?

Well yes - because every single part of their design revolves around playing games, and the developers know they only have to deal with one set of hardware.



I use the third option, which is ethernet over powerlines. Since I can guarantee that my 360 is next to a power socket, it's a great choice.

Does it actually work well, then?

I'm glad to pay for Live because I've used a Wii and a PS3 and a PC online, and Live is a seamless walled garden of joy whereas the rest are inept and clunky. Fourty quid a year for everyhting to just work, and to haev achievements, gamerpoints - it's brilliant value.

Yeah, it's brilliant. The main reason I have it is because it gives a more consistently high throughput than wireless, and as I use my 360 as a media center extender, that's valuable.

But you're not paying for the achievements or anything like that. Strip it all away and have a free Silver membership and you still have access to everything barring the Peer to Peer online play (i.e. fuck all cost to MS and fairly laggy gameplay), and the new party system.

Basically, you're paying for access to P2P online play, which is hosted entirely by us.

You could easily turn that on it's head and say how amazing the silver service is for free then, couldn't you? Of course, the reason it's free is to suck people into the gold service.

We don't have a choice, though. Our choice is cough up and play online, or don't play online. I know which I'd choose every time.

Right, but we're still allowed to complain about it on this here forum. You don't have to kid yourself that it's good value. MS aren't going to knock on your door and rape your kids. Probably.

No, how could it be great without online play?

Myp: you have an horrible taste in food.

OH. And I almost forgot the major pisstake that is the advertising. There's advertising all over the dashboard, and we're defaulted to the ad section when we start the fucking console up. Despite paying a monthly subscription. That's taking the piss.

It is good value, though, otherwise I wouldn't pay for it. You can't seem to get it into your head that it's worth what we'll pay for it. It's a premium service that is worth paying for.

The Silver service isn't even a service though. The achievements and all of that shit is part of the general console functionality. That's like calling the PSOne's memory card manager a service. We shouldn't be charged for this, and we shouldn't be thinking it's great value just because we enjoy using it. It should be completely free. We are being ripped off. Whether it's a menial amount that we can compare to fruity chewing gum or a million quid, we're still being ripped off.