What do you mean how? It's free money. They saw people were stupid enough to fall for it so might as well profit from that as well.
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how the F did we just accept paying for online on consoles?
- Thread starter Mezati99
- Start date
Same.
I just play console exclusive single player games, everything else is PC.
I always said if Steam started a thing for $5 a month that gave you free Steam games and consolidated all of the Game Launchers into one, with a unified friends list and cross game invites/parties for all games, people would be all over that.
Because Microsoft offered a suite of features that were attractive to game journalists, and nearly only game journalists, for a premium price, and their satisfaction with the service made those who played less more compliant.
People would sub immediately, then we'd have a mirror to this thread in 5 years with mass confusion.
what? this isnt a gotcha thing. Microsoft started the paywall while providing a better service, folks equated the better service (it helps Bungie delivered one of the best experiences online of the time in Halo 2) to the paywall and ate it up. Sony and Nintendo didnt provide a service with paywall for the longest time and eventually embraced it. Like there is zero reason Sony would have approached a paid service if not for Microsoft showing you can get away with it. This isn't a comment of throwing someone under the bus, they as one of the 3 console makers started it and paved the way.
If Microsoft come around and says that they no longer will charge for playing online in the future it won't retroactively make it where they didn't start it.
And how is it MS's fault? Nobody forced them to do it, why are people blaming MS for Nintendo and Sony decisions?
Yes MS started the trend, but other companies didn't have to follow suit. Apple has a lot of things they introduce in the market, the other brands don't always blindly follow them even if they have profit.
I never paid for subscription btw, it was my choice not to do so because i don't agree with it. But i don't blame other companies for crap my favourite company does.
Let's say, if Valve introduced something like that i wouldn't blame MS or Sony or Nintendo, i would blame Valve.
Same deal with horse armor in Oblivion which started the whole microtransaction thing. The people thought it was a one time deal which in the case of MS it was for a decade until it wasn't this gen. It needed backlash when it was just starting to stop it from being popular which sadly didn't happen. Only PC was smart enough to protest.
Sony and Nintendo was observing for a decade before jumping in. Seeing that console people don't really care then might as well rip them off like MS did. They didn't have to follow but at the end of the day, the money is there and seeing that there isn't a big enough backlash to it they jumped in.
Oh valve and every other pc marketplace wouldn't dare do so since they already knew that their audience would react to it badly. Console and PC space has a different set of priorities and knowledge over what is possible.
No they wouldn't.
If Steam started charging for online play, gamers would start welcoming the Epic Store and its free online with open arms.
Basically.
SONY said it will allow them to improved their network and, in fact, they improved their network. It took time (which is normal) but they did it. We will see at the end of life of the Nintendo Switch if it helped them to build a better network too.
The fact we accepted the state of multi player games today (paying for maps, weapons, cosmetics, ...) is more concerning to me.
I got my XBL subscription in Feb. 2005, so I was an early adopter. I got it at the behest of my circle of friends from back in the Halo CE LAN days, who felt playing online was far more easy and convenient than setting up a time and place to have a LAN. While I would have preferred to spend that money on gas and pizza and keep having the LANs, they all insisted on it, and it only came out to $4.16/month, so I decided to take the plunge. I had never played online before Halo 2 (I was never a PC gamer), so it never struck me as unusual or out of the ordinary for online gaming to be a premium service. I just kind of rolled with it. Here I am nearly 15 years later, still subscribed. I'm a console gamer, I still enjoy playing Halo online (and I occasionally play other games with online MP modes, though nothing that's online-only), so I continue to put up with it. I don't like it because I'm a cheap bastard, but I put up with it because I have no choice but to pay up to keep playing online. As the industry has gotten increasingly more aggressive with trying to monetize everything they can, I've been wanting proof that they need to charge for the things they deemed "premium." Did the expense of operating XBL justify a subscription fee? I guess we'll never know. At least they give you "free" games now.
It doesn't help that last generation MS really made it seem like you got what you were paying for. For the early years of last gen, PSN wasn't nearly as robust or reliable as XBL was, and Nintendo's online offerings were bare-bones basic. When you had a $50/year service that was good versus free services that were not nearly as good, it seemed like a no-brainer to go with the premium service. Sony spent last generation catching up with MS on the online front, while Nintendo never even bothered to do that much (seriously, still no proper friends list or native support for party chat?). Regardless of whether or not the expense of operating XBL justified charging people $50/year ($60/year after Nov. 1, 2010), the fact that XBL was originally an objectively superior service and the only paid online service of its kind reinforced the idea that to get good online service on a console you had to pay for it. Starting with the PS4 PSN was finally able to match XBL, including needing PS+ to be able to play online, cementing the whole "if you want a good online service on consoles you have to pay a premium" thing. Even Nintendo has a premium service that offers access to free NES & SNES games, though their online is still a joke (trying to play Mario Kart 8 DX with a friend was a huge hassle).
It doesn't help that last generation MS really made it seem like you got what you were paying for. For the early years of last gen, PSN wasn't nearly as robust or reliable as XBL was, and Nintendo's online offerings were bare-bones basic. When you had a $50/year service that was good versus free services that were not nearly as good, it seemed like a no-brainer to go with the premium service. Sony spent last generation catching up with MS on the online front, while Nintendo never even bothered to do that much (seriously, still no proper friends list or native support for party chat?). Regardless of whether or not the expense of operating XBL justified charging people $50/year ($60/year after Nov. 1, 2010), the fact that XBL was originally an objectively superior service and the only paid online service of its kind reinforced the idea that to get good online service on a console you had to pay for it. Starting with the PS4 PSN was finally able to match XBL, including needing PS+ to be able to play online, cementing the whole "if you want a good online service on consoles you have to pay a premium" thing. Even Nintendo has a premium service that offers access to free NES & SNES games, though their online is still a joke (trying to play Mario Kart 8 DX with a friend was a huge hassle).
People rarely act and think collectively in regards to exponentially more serious matters (think global warming) - do you really think this would apply to a videogame subscription service?
The Xbox 360 was my first experience with online multiplayer, so I didn't think twice about paying the fee. I was totally a fan of the Xbox Live service back in those days (e.g. Achievements/Gamer score, Netflix streaming, etc.) and it was in my opinion a better console than the PS3. However, looking back on it, the PS3 lacked the Xbox 360 in the games department early in the lifecycle, but at $599 it actually was a better value than the Xbox 360 since the PS3 was a complete system, didn't charge for multiplayer and didn't have that RRoD issue. With Xbox 360 you had to buy things piecemeal (e.g. wireless adapter, High Definition disk drive, online multiplayer, etc.).
When PS4 came around I was just so glad that they weren't doing the DRM that Xbox One had planned so the fact that they were starting to charge for online didn't bother me. When Nintendo added it with the Switch, I didn't care either since I don't play Nintendo games online.
Now I mainly play on PC and I don't ever see myself going back to mainly playing on consoles. The online fee isn't the main reason for that, but it's a big reason why I won't go back to mainly consoles.
I do hope that Microsoft kills what they started and remove the fee with their next system. It seems like they would want to do this with Phil Spencer in charge and everything they've done recently to build good will with customers. They've got so many other ways to make money (e.g. Gamepass, Xcloud, etc.) in a way that provides value to the customer without just unnecessarily blocking features behind a paywall. And it's not fair to Xbox customers that they have to pay for online when it's free on PC.
When PS4 came around I was just so glad that they weren't doing the DRM that Xbox One had planned so the fact that they were starting to charge for online didn't bother me. When Nintendo added it with the Switch, I didn't care either since I don't play Nintendo games online.
Now I mainly play on PC and I don't ever see myself going back to mainly playing on consoles. The online fee isn't the main reason for that, but it's a big reason why I won't go back to mainly consoles.
I do hope that Microsoft kills what they started and remove the fee with their next system. It seems like they would want to do this with Phil Spencer in charge and everything they've done recently to build good will with customers. They've got so many other ways to make money (e.g. Gamepass, Xcloud, etc.) in a way that provides value to the customer without just unnecessarily blocking features behind a paywall. And it's not fair to Xbox customers that they have to pay for online when it's free on PC.