almighty has a 360!! Thoughts and game sugestions

[Inuhanyou]

Its a hit or miss kind of thing. If one wants to use live's services, its been a requirement since Live was established and people who use Live know this. Whether you support it or you don't its that simple.

Microsoft was pretty crafty coming in with a price point at the time that they did(the digital age was not quite here and thus was a niche). I'm sure Sony wishes they had not sat on their thumbs for the first few years of PS2's life and did the same thing.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

But a lot of the services aren't Live services, but 3rd party. Netflix and LoveFilm and all those apps on PS3 are free to access. Even if paid for apps, there's no subscription fee to access.

 

[almighty]

Its a hit or miss kind of thing. If one wants to use live's services, its been a requirement since Live was established and people who use Live know this. Whether you support it or you don't its that simple.

Microsoft was pretty crafty coming in with a price point at the time that they did(the digital age was not quite here and thus was a niche). I'm sure Sony wishes they had not sat on their thumbs for the first few years of PS2's life and did the same thing.

Charging g for things that others don't charge for is just crap..... Microsoft really need to re-evaluate the cost of LIVE and what it brings to the table.

 

[BRiT]

Agreed, it is quite bad that they require Gold level for those free apps.

However, I don't think $40 a year is bad price for the consistent user experience provided by cross-game-chat and it's party and friends system. It's well worth it if you plan to talk or game online with friends.

 

[Nesh]

Agreed, it is quite bad that they require Gold level for those free apps.

However, I don't think $40 a year is bad price for the consistent user experience provided by cross-game-chat and it's party and friends system. It's well worth it if you plan to talk or game online with friends.

Lets see if thats gonna be worth it if its present on the PS4 as standard
Does the Vita require PS Plus to have cross game chat and such btw?

 

[BRiT]

A bit off topic, but ...

It'll certainly be worth it for me when/if my friends are playing on the next XBox. It's not really an option for me to move to a platform that my friends likely wont be gaming on (WiiU and likely PS4 too).

I think they don't charge for it on the Vita because that platform simply doesn't sell well enough to be able to try to justify yet another cost to the users. Where as the PS4 should be sure to sell substantially well enough to try to charge for advanced features. I think Sony will reconsider charging for those advanced features on their next-gen console, or at least bundle it into PSN.

 

[2real4tv]

Agreed, it is quite bad that they require Gold level for those free apps.

However, I don't think $40 a year is bad price for the consistent user experience provided by cross-game-chat and it's party and friends system. It's well worth it if you plan to talk or game online with friends.

Never understood the voice chat point, is it a continuous expense for Microsoft?

 

[BRiT]

It's understandable people don't appreciate the voice chat bit if they don't use it, but those who game with friends really appreciate it. It's very nice and extremely easy to be able to organize what game to play next or to talk about reviews while everyone may be finishing up their current game or just signing in and wonder which game to load up. It's also a blast to joke about while playing or just to vent about how horrible some game or demo was.

No, it's not a continual expense for MS. They do have a solid stream of supplemental revenue through Live Gold subscriptions though. I believe it has enabled them to continually improve their services or try out other services without it being a cost drain on the company's balance sheets.

 

[XpiderMX]

Forza Horizon is a Great Game.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Never understood the voice chat point, is it a continuous expense for Microsoft?

You can think of it that way. Another way to think of it is how much would it cost to do it yourself?

Teamspeak, Ventrilo, and Mumble are probably the most common universal cross chat systems used by gamers on PC. Each of those costs about 3-4 dollars a month for a 10 person server on a hosting service. Or ~36-48 dollars a year. And the "only" thing you get is universal cross game chat. Granted only 1 person has to pay that. But then if you wanted to have voice chat with someone you just met in a game, you basically have to give them your chat server info...then they have to configure it on their end...then jump in and hope it all works. Imagine having to do that everyday? And potentially multiple times everyday? I've been there and done that. Not fun.

And, of course, quality varies quite a bit. A good hosting service will cost more and have better quality. A cheaper hosting service will likely have worst quality and occasional annoying interruptions of service (downtime).

Coming from PC gaming, considering everything you get, Xbox Live is relatively cheap. You get universal chat that is, here's the important part: consistent, good, and reliable (unless your internet just plain sucks). You get a fairly consistent multiplayer experience. It's easy for a group of friends to move from game to game (in general). You get access to some premium features. And it all just works. Nothing to install. Nothing to configure. Nothing to troubleshoot if something goes wrong.

And MS isn't just hosting voice chat for 10's of thousands of gamers or even 100's of thousands of gamers like most chat hosting services. They have to provide reliable, consistent, and trouble free voice chat for millions of gamers.

Is it 50 dollars a month expensive? No. But then they aren't getting 50 dollars a month from you, unless you buy your Xbox Gold Live directly from them. If you buy it from a retailer like Gamestop, Best Buy, or whever, then they get a cut and MS likely gets between 30-40 dollars of it. Is it still costing them that much? Of course not. Otherwise they'd be losing money as they are also providing a lot of other services. Gold subscribers also help subsidize the cost of the free services that are provided to all X360 users in addition to whatever else they get from the Gold service. All that and still try to make some small profit off of it. They are a business after all, not a charity.

Regards,
SB

 

[Squilliam]

You can think of it that way. Another way to think of it is how much would it cost to do it yourself?

Regards,
SB

They also have the research and development into network architecture/latency reduction, the unified skill tracking which pits you against people of similar skill, redundancy to prevent downtime because even an hour is unacceptable, etc.

 

[Billy Idol]

You can think of it that way. Another way to think of it is how much would it cost to do it yourself?

Teamspeak, Ventrilo, and Mumble are probably the most common universal cross chat systems used by gamers on PC. Each of those costs about 3-4 dollars a month for a 10 person server on a hosting service. Or ~36-48 dollars a year. And the "only" thing you get is universal cross game chat. Granted only 1 person has to pay that. But then if you wanted to have voice chat with someone you just met in a game, you basically have to give them your chat server info...then they have to configure it on their end...then jump in and hope it all works. Imagine having to do that everyday? And potentially multiple times everyday? I've been there and done that. Not fun.

And, of course, quality varies quite a bit. A good hosting service will cost more and have better quality. A cheaper hosting service will likely have worst quality and occasional annoying interruptions of service (downtime).

Coming from PC gaming, considering everything you get, Xbox Live is relatively cheap. You get universal chat that is, here's the important part: consistent, good, and reliable (unless your internet just plain sucks). You get a fairly consistent multiplayer experience. It's easy for a group of friends to move from game to game (in general). You get access to some premium features. And it all just works. Nothing to install. Nothing to configure. Nothing to troubleshoot if something goes wrong.

And MS isn't just hosting voice chat for 10's of thousands of gamers or even 100's of thousands of gamers like most chat hosting services. They have to provide reliable, consistent, and trouble free voice chat for millions of gamers.

Is it 50 dollars a month expensive? No. But then they aren't getting 50 dollars a month from you, unless you buy your Xbox Gold Live directly from them. If you buy it from a retailer like Gamestop, Best Buy, or whever, then they get a cut and MS likely gets between 30-40 dollars of it. Is it still costing them that much? Of course not. Otherwise they'd be losing money as they are also providing a lot of other services. Gold subscribers also help subsidize the cost of the free services that are provided to all X360 users in addition to whatever else they get from the Gold service. All that and still try to make some small profit off of it. They are a business after all, not a charity.

Regards,
SB

Lol! You are trying way to hard to defend MS Live costs imo!

On PC, we use teamspeak. It is a free downloadable software. My friend uses one of his old PC as a server. He also uses this PC as a teamspeak server, so no additional cost whatsoever.

I typically play with the same bunch of people everday...I did the same on my Xbox, don't know if you really meet new 'friends' everyday which have to join your party chat. But even if someone new wants to join: it takes for this new friend about as long and as much effort as putting in a web address in your browser (imagen doing this ever y day!?)...so in short: 10 seconds.

Besides zero cost, quality is better with more options (e.g. make dedicated channels for specific games) and there are even apps so that I can join TS with my iPhone to mess around with the gang while getting home from work...

Live is good, especially the party chat feature...but that you have to pay money to use such basic features of the console is a real bummer. And it is in my opinion unacceptable to pay for enabling online play, a basic feature not only of the console but also of the game you buy. I hope nect gen gets rid of this! While this was no problem at the beginning of the console life where I had Gold every year, it is a real problem now. I bought Halo 4, but to try out MP I need Gold...so no show for me, as my Gold just expired...

 

[Nesh]

A bit off topic, but ...

It'll certainly be worth it for me when/if my friends are playing on the next XBox. It's not really an option for me to move to a platform that my friends likely wont be gaming on (WiiU and likely PS4 too).

Thats a peculiar definition of "worth it". Basically you say it will be worth it because you will have no other option than pay for something someone else could be offering for free?
Its like saying you are living in a country that charges breathing air and its worth it because you dont want to go to the rest of the world where air is free, when you should have been questioning why you are forced to pay for something you shouldnt have

I think they don't charge for it on the Vita because that platform simply doesn't sell well enough to be able to try to justify yet another cost to the users. Where as the PS4 should be sure to sell substantially well enough to try to charge for advanced features. I think Sony will reconsider charging for those advanced features on their next-gen console, or at least bundle it into PSN.

Free cross chat on the Vita was planned from the beginning so I doubt their choice to no charge had anything to do with its post-launch sales.

 

[almighty]

I just use MSN messenger for voice chat, add people to the conversation and then leave it running in the back ground.

 

[mrcorbo]

Aside from the Stockholm Syndrome effect that immediately comes to mind; I think, ultimately, the dividing line on how one feels about this is determined by whether one feels the XBOX Live service as a whole is worth paying a premium for. Once you've gotten over that threshold, you're not really effected by what MS chooses to put behind a paywall since you've already decided to buy in. These services are effectively "free" to you. Obviously, if you don't feel like XBL provides a premium experience, then it would certainly feel like them charging for the same services that others get for free is a bad deal.

 

[AzBat]

Aside from the Stockholm Syndrome effect that immediately comes to mind; I think, ultimately, the dividing line on how one feels about this is determined by whether one feels the XBOX Live service as a whole is worth paying a premium for. Once you've gotten over that threshold, you're not really effected by what MS chooses to put behind a paywall since you've already decided to buy in. These services are effectively "free" to you. Obviously, if you don't feel like XBL provides a premium experience, then it would certainly feel like them charging for the same services that others get for free is a bad deal.

Ditto. I feel the same way. It's worth it to me. I feel I get my money's worth. All the extra apps are bonuses.

BTW, one good thing about a paid service is that parents can choose whether or not their children can have access to it. If I know I'm not paying for it & I know that they don't have money to pay for it, then I don't have to worry so much about them being exposed to rude & vulgar people online or anything else. True there maybe parental controls that might help me on a free system. But nothing is better for my piece of mind knowing that they need to pay real money to get access to the Internet.

Tommy McClain

 

[joker454]

I haven't had a 360 in a long time, but when I did have one what I loved about Live was gaming with strangers. You'd meet so many new people online and game with them, be it racing with a group of Italians who only partly spoke English, playing magic the gathering with a worthy opponent from the USA, or playing a shooter on a team composed of entirely women. The fact that voice support was so standard and ubiquitous on the 360 made it to me a far better online experience than anything out there. I suppose if you just game with the same group of people over and over again then it doesn't matter, but that's not how I play online. The bulk of the fun to me was meeting and gaming with new people, and to that extent nothing to date to me has compared to the online experience that XBlive provided back when I used to use it. I think back to experiences like 20 person online matches on Blur with people that I never met before and what a party those were, as much as I prefer pc gaming I'd have to say it's online support is so lacking compared to Live that it's not even in the same league to me. While I love gaming on pc and far prefer the graphics to console (which I find to look archaic), I do find online on pc positively boring and outdated. I very much miss Live in that regard, and it's probably the only aspect of console gaming that may get me to buy Microsoft's next console when it comes out. Your mileage of course may vary, so spend your money accordingly.

 

[BRiT]

Thats a peculiar definition of "worth it". Basically you say it will be worth it because you will have no other option than pay for something someone else could be offering for free?

You're missing the point. The point is to play games with friends who live in all sorts of different countries so gaming in person is not an option. If they're all gaming on the next Xbox then I too will be gaming on the next Xbox. It does fuck-for-all to get a Wii-U/PS4 or other console even if their online experience is free when my friend's wont be gaming on those.

 

[Scott_Arm]

If I didn't play online and socialize online, Xbox Live wouldn't be worth it, period. I do, and that makes it worth the money. A lot of the time I'm talking with with that are playing different games than me. A good amount of the time I'm playing something like NHL, and we have lots of players I don't know hopping in and out of our party looking to play or organize one of the meta leagues that have developed around the game because of the voice chat. You literally have thousands of players in an online league with commissioners, owners/GMs, players, salary caps, farm leagues etc, and having group voice chat makes it really easy for people to meet their teammates, have team meetings and organize their games.

If I just wanted Netflix or something, and wasn't interested in online chat or gaming, the Xbox would not be the way to go.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Lol! You are trying way to hard to defend MS Live costs imo!

On PC, we use teamspeak. It is a free downloadable software. My friend uses one of his old PC as a server. He also uses this PC as a teamspeak server, so no additional cost whatsoever.

I typically play with the same bunch of people everday...I did the same on my Xbox, don't know if you really meet new 'friends' everyday which have to join your party chat. But even if someone new wants to join: it takes for this new friend about as long and as much effort as putting in a web address in your browser (imagen doing this ever y day!?)...so in short: 10 seconds.

Besides zero cost, quality is better with more options (e.g. make dedicated channels for specific games) and there are even apps so that I can join TS with my iPhone to mess around with the gang while getting home from work...

Live is good, especially the party chat feature...but that you have to pay money to use such basic features of the console is a real bummer. And it is in my opinion unacceptable to pay for enabling online play, a basic feature not only of the console but also of the game you buy. I hope nect gen gets rid of this! While this was no problem at the beginning of the console life where I had Gold every year, it is a real problem now. I bought Halo 4, but to try out MP I need Gold...so no show for me, as my Gold just expired...

Sure, it's free, but that doesn't automatically make it better.

Don't know how to configure a Teamspeak server and don't know anyone that does? Well, you're out of luck.

The person running your Teamspeak server is on vacation and the server goes down (it's happend to me quite a few times), then again your out of luck.

Pray that the person hosting the voice chat server has adequate bandwidth with low latency or get ready for a stuttery horror show of an experience.

Want to get some awesome team player in some random game into voice chat? Does he have Teamspeak? Probably not. Ventrilo is far more popular. But assuming he has Teamspeak. Now you have to relay the server information to him. Then you have to hope he knows what to do with it or walk him through it. In text chat. In an online game. Not fun. I used to have to do that all the F***ing time as one of the leaders of a best guild on a server in an MMO. Start doing that multiple times a day, practically every day, and it becomes very attractive to have a universal solution even if you have to pay for it.

And even when everything is working fine. You always...ALWAYS run into people with crappy mic's, crappy headphones, mic volume set too low so you can barely hear them, or set to high so you have to boot them off the server (if you have the rights to do so) or have to mute them. The experience is so irregular that it can get mighty annoying when you should be playing.

Voice chat should just be there. No fuss, no muss. That's what Xbox Live Gold gives you.

This isn't about defending Microsoft. I have never gamed on Xbox Live Gold with other people. This is all about 15+ years of experience with voice chat on the PC and how incredibly infuriating and annoying an experience it can be.

Free is great. But free isn't always better. I'd be more than happy to pay money for a good voice chat experience. Hence, why serious guilds usually pay for professional hosting services, and then spend large sums of money for quality headsets and mic's. Hmmm, well, there just went any potential savings you'd have...

Hell, most of the guilds I've been in would pay money just to not have to constantly give out connection info to our voice chat servers anytime we meet a new person in a game that we'd like to be able to have in voice chat.

And that's, of course, ignoring that Xbox Live Gold brings many other things to the table that just aren't available universally on PC.

I really can't stress enough that this has nothing to do with defending MS, but everything to do with how annoying voice chat can be on PC with regards to gaming. And how I'd be more than willing to pay 10 USD a month for a universal voice chat system that removes all of my gripes.

Hell, I'd just be happy if everyone was using the same freaking voice chat software, so you don't run into the dreaded, "I have X voice chat client installed, but not the Y voice chat client that you are using." conversation.

Regards,
SB