Differences between xbl and psn(online only)

[Arwin]

Yeah it sucks that it came to that, but if we can't even come to an agreement on something as basic as "try before you buy" being a good thing, then going beyond that is pointless really, it will never result in any meaningful conversation other than spin. If you can't agree with someone that 1 + 1 = 2, would you then go on to discuss math with them? I'd probably just walk away

Just like you walked away from my 1+1+1+1+1=1 argument in this post I'll wager? Though to be fair you probably just missed it. http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1331493&postcount=150

Yes! Incidentally, that is *very* much by design

Transparent, but very clever of course. I found myself having a near opposite reaction, as I always have, going like "oh great, you're going to give me an achievement for nothing particular I did in the game. It's like a free gift except the sole purpose is that I'd have to pay to keep it." But I bet a bunch of people bought into that a couple of times - it's just one of those many nudges.

I'm sure every other XBL advantage will be shot down as worthless and/or not needed with some form of spin. I don't really expect that to change here, so it's probably time to just move on.

This kind of immaturity is what makes me agree with that second sentence ... the thread served its purpose, the OP got what he wanted, and every other discussion can have its own thread.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Even thought XBL might offer a more coherent experience than PSN, this has no relation to the fee you have to pay.

After all, this coherent experience and whatever extra features XBL might offer, are just one time costs for development. And they are not even particularly high costs, we are talking profit margins with many multiples!!!

The only reason how i could justify having XbL gold is if they offered huge amounts of dedicated servers for the most popular games. Thats the only thing that would justify the $5 a month.

Now your paying $5 a month for fixed costs that have already been paid for !

It's hardly a unique pricing model in other businesses. For example a faster internet connection doesn't generate much extra costs for the ISP, but they charge a lot more for the faster connection. a car can cost almost twice as much than the base model with very little changes or costs to the manufacturer. Value for consumer has little to do with costs to manufacturer in many cases.

I think online play should be free on X360 though. There should be other perks for the Gold members, like market place discounts etc, maybe so that the discount % would increase with the length of your gold membership, that would encourage people to remain gold members. In the US the Xbox Live is much better than here, but still I pay 2.7e a month for it and I hope the day never comes when an amount like that causes problems for me. A pack of cigarettes is about twice as much...

 

[Squilliam]

Ok then perhaps we could/should get away from the demo issue?

I have a possible topic:

Is there anything inherent in the network architecture to back up my perception that with Xbox Live in connecting to gaming friends found all over the world I experience less latency than connecting to the same or similar people in similar locations on PSN?

Im not talking about connecting to people found on the matchmaking servers or in my locale, im talking about people who are 12 time zones and one hemisphere distant from my location in New Zealand.

What I find is that with Xbox Live the games are playable but with noticeable latency, and with PSN the games have severe and intollerable lag. The games im comparing are Halo 3, Gears of War, Killzone 2, Little Big Planet (im not a big online gamer!!!!). From that my perception is that whilst I don't play online, if I did I would play on Xbox Live rather than for free on PSN.

Now my question is about whether my perception is accurate?

 

[joker454]

Just like you walked away from my 1+1+1+1+1=1 argument in this post I'll wager? Though to be fair you probably just missed it. http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1331493&postcount=150

Quick answers since this thread is mostly done for me anyways:

If patsu doesn't have a 360 then I don't understand how he can comment on XBLive in the first place, although it does explain much of his mis information on it though.

I won't comment on the PS3 game sharing amongst many people 'feature', that was not the intent of that function. But the abuse of it should make it much less surprising to you why there is so much more content on XBLive compared to PSN. PC guys wonder why games get delayed and/or not released on their platform, and I tell them it's because of piracy. Next time you wonder why it takes forever for some content to come to PSN (if ever), well, now you have an idea why.

Finally, if you've ever said something even remotely possible towards Microsoft in the past few years that I've been here, then I've never seen it. What I have seen is how you always interject how (insert any PS3 exclusive game/ip/feature here) is always better irregardless if its a PC thread, 360 thread, or a thread on oatmeal. So I'm not surprised that I can't get you to admit that universal demos are a good thing.

Ok then perhaps we could/should get away from the demo issue?

Yup I'm done, thread is all yours.

 

[patsu]

why do you care how a developer spends his resources. seriously? why is it any of your business? unless you are leading the team what does that have to do with whether MOST consumers would want to try before they buy?

Because gaming is a title business. The poor buggers make or break title by title. The success rate is low enough already. On the consumer end, I hate to see developers get stuck with inefficient marketing mechanisms. If they fail, I'll get bunch of &*$#&Q%&^&$ uninspiring titles. Haven't you seen me b*tch about Sony's wasted marketing opportunities ?

Even for XBL, I'd rather Microsoft save all the wasted demo bandwidth $$$ to build a dedicated server farm.

Most consumers would want to try before they buy, but that doesn't mean businesses have to always follow suit -- if it is inefficient. The consumers may benefit (more ?) via other investment.

 

[2real4tv]

Imo this is impossible, and why my XBL gold account is closed.

Even thought XBL might offer a more coherent experience than PSN, this has no relation to the fee you have to pay.

After all, this coherent experience and whatever extra features XBL might offer, are just one time costs for development. And they are not even particularly high costs, we are talking profit margins with many multiples!!!

The only reason how i could justify having XbL gold is if they offered huge amounts of dedicated servers for the most popular games. Thats the only thing that would justify the $5 a month.

Now your paying $5 a month for fixed costs that have already been paid for !

This post is golden and is exactly how I feel you would think they would at least drop the price by now. I especially like the dedicated servers part it would have worked wonders for my favorite 360 game GeOW. I wish Silver would mean free online gaming and Gold everything else.

edit: OT but is it that expensive to run dedicated servers?

 

[patsu]

Both Microsoft and Sony will adjust their strategies as they move forward. I suspect most of the complains we have against XBL and PSN will likely go away as more non-gamers hop on board.

 

[jonabbey]

I think PSN's text chat room system is a significant feature that XBL doesn't have.

(Am I doing this right? ;-)

 

[jonabbey]

On a more serious level, if one can buy Microsoft Points on discount, how does that affect publishers on XBLA? If game sharing on PSN is bad because it impacts publishers (as I'm sure it does), do publishers see any benefit from having less discounts on game costs? Or is the price discount something Microsoft just absorbs as a platform marketing cost?

 

[Acert93]

I will admit that many of my XBLA game purchases were made after I got the first achievement and a box came up saying "buy this game to make your achievement permanent!"

Same here. I am really picky, but a handful of times after trying a demo (and I try a lot of them when they come out) and I like it and if the price is right that "achievement" trick work, even though I don't collec them Lest Trials... best leaderboard/achievements ever... anyhow, XBL does a great job of incentives. They make it easy to try new demos, easy to buy, and allow me to get a good sense if it is crap or something I would be interested in. Without demos I wouldn't buy ANY arcade games, but I own like dozen.

So for me as a consumer no demo = no sale, so XBL is an absolute win for developers if they are courting my dollars.

Imo this is impossible, and why my XBL gold account is closed.

Even thought XBL might offer a more coherent experience than PSN, this has no relation to the fee you have to pay.

I agree with this. With Gamespy, Xfire, Vent, TeamSpeak, FilePlanet, etc etc etc as free tools on the PC and many, many PC games having excellent server/game finding tools the only "value" to XBL to me as a consumer is that it is better than PSN (was and remains so, even if the gap closes) and it is where my friends are. P2P or whatever people want to call it, and paying for it, is just plain stupid. I like video on demand, Netflix is a great integration, parties rock, etc and the package is very well coordinated. But paying for playing online (and usualy capped between 8 and 24!) is one of my big bugger boos. But I don't see PSN as an option for me (maybe if Sony had the you know what to snag Xfire or a tried, proven, and effective interface Day 1 and built on it) things would be different. As a big online gamer there really isn't a lot of options, so I pay.

After all, this coherent experience and whatever extra features XBL might offer, are just one time costs for development. And they are not even particularly high costs, we are talking profit margins with many multiples!!!

I am sure infra and dev costs are high, yet between adverts and the STUPIDLY INSANE price of stuff (light saber, $5?!!!) and I think it just comes down to their general strategy: the RRoD screwed their pricing strategy (and market penetration) and they have really hit axillary revenue channels hard to keep the boat from sinking.

Now $3-$5 month isn't a lot of get a premium online experience, the problem is that everything is premium right until you get into games. And while many games are great there are clearly examples where it could e a lot better. Then again, as 1943 shows, ded servers does NOT solve all these problems. It really is a user-experience investment issue and I think console makers, pubs, and most devs really struggle here.

Until you have experienced a game with a premier dev house doing servers right and a community supporting it strongly with good tools (chat, Xfire, etc) or are playing on clan-supported servers (which surprising was cheaper than XBL per month per user AND open to non-members!) you pretty much get whatever you get.

 

[Asher]

Even for XBL, I'd rather Microsoft save all the wasted demo bandwidth $$$ to build a dedicated server farm.

I'm trying to tell myself that this was a joke?

Most consumers would want to try before they buy, but that doesn't mean businesses have to always follow suit -- if it is inefficient. The consumers may benefit (more ?) via other investment.

I don't think you comprehend the cost of setting up dedicated servers. Especially to host potentially millions of concurrent games. Especially considering the global scale.

I guarantee you the cost differential between the bandwidth costs to serve up demos (which are compensated for by increased purchases, guaranteed) and the cost to set up an acceptable amount of dedicated servers are different by dozens of orders of magnitude.

The more salient point here is that the demos do, absolutely, increase purchase rate. I'm one of many people who feel I need a demo of a game of some kind before I can buy it if it has no history -- either at a friend's house or via demo. I've purchased many XBLA games, but not a single PSN game. I don't even bother looking at the new releases on the PSN because I assume there will be no demo. No demo, no sale.

Add in the extra tricks like the "buy the game to unlock this achievement", and you've got a lot of people upgrading the demos to the full version. I'm fairly certain the bandwidth costs of serving the demos is compensated for, and then some, by the increased sales. It's not a sunk cost like you pretend it is.

 

[ShadowRunner]

The more salient point here is that the demos do, absolutely, increase purchase rate. I'm one of many people who feel I need a demo of a game of some kind before I can buy it if it has no history -- either at a friend's house or via demo. I've purchased many XBLA games, but not a single PSN game. I don't even bother looking at the new releases on the PSN because I assume there will be no demo. No demo, no sale.

Many games on PSN do have demos yet you stil havent bought any anyway

 

[patsu]

I don't think you comprehend the cost of setting up dedicated servers. Especially to host potentially millions of concurrent games. Especially considering the global scale.

More people will subscribe to Gold (or another premium tier) as a result of the dedicated servers. On top of that, MS can add in the savings from the wasted demo bandwidth. MS is building out their own CDN server network. It doesn't have to be as big without the liberal demo downloads.

I guarantee you the cost differential between the bandwidth costs to serve up demos (which are compensated for by increased purchases, guaranteed) and the cost to set up an acceptable amount of dedicated servers are different by dozens of orders of magnitude.

The more salient point here is that the demos do, absolutely, increase purchase rate. I'm one of many people who feel I need a demo of a game of some kind before I can buy it if it has no history -- either at a friend's house or via demo. I've purchased many XBLA games, but not a single PSN game. I don't even bother looking at the new releases on the PSN because I assume there will be no demo. No demo, no sale.

Add in the extra tricks like the "buy the game to unlock this achievement", and you've got a lot of people upgrading the demos to the full version. I'm fairly certain the bandwidth costs of serving the demos is compensated for, and then some, by the increased sales. It's not a sunk cost like you pretend it is.

You are missing the cost picture. Those who download and redownload freely without buying. Not all XBLA games are great too: http://flipthemedia.com/index.php/2008/05/xbox-live-might-delete-games/. It's wasteful to do demoes for low quality or low sales titles. In this incident, MS didn't even want these games to be listed. Let alone the demoes. Leave the developers to decide whether demo is good for them.

Do you have numbers to back your claim ?

 

[Tap In]

Because gaming is a title business. The poor buggers make or break title by title. The success rate is low enough already.

As Joker pointed out, getting five friends together to "share" a PSN title helps the dev financially how? compared to five people trying a demo and two paying full price because it suits them.

 

[patsu]

I believe the question has been raised by some developers before. Sony justified it by saying, based on their stats, only a very small % of people do that because it's inconvenient to use (Only one can play at a time). I believe it's a spokeperson who mentioned it briefly in a Q&A. May be hard to google.

It's a small system to have some viral effect or allow price sensitive people to bite or for personal use.

If it's a problem, Sony would have shut it down. It's not like they have not offended gamers before. ^_^

 

[Acert93]

The infrastructure is already there for demos (think non-peak for you infra guys) ... this is just silly patsu. This isn't an "else / if" proposition (minus demos, get ded servers). MS already hosts a fair bit of the backend and a number of games have ded servers. As pointed out ded servers aren't a panacea either for online gaming (see: BF1943--I would take a ton of "p2p" games like Halo 3 and CoD4 over that in terms of "served" experience).

Basically you are doing Sony bullet points for why they charge for bandwidth and don't have demos for every game when at the end of the day A) for consumers more is better and B) Console makers have other ways of recouping fees (% sales, adverts, memberships, upselling, DLC, platform desirability resulting in increased "other" sales like units, peripherals, etc). While some devs may like a smaller pond I can tell you that MS's implimentation has had be purchasing content I never did on the PC.

As for pulling older titles that aren't as high quality (especially as the platform matures) to give consumers and and devs better experiences, this is no different from retail. It is a "floor space" issue and trying to funnel gamers to the best products. Now there should be a way not to totally remove them but in most cases it won't hurt at all.

Anyhow the infrastracture is already there for other purposes and one of the purposes for the infrastructure is "marketing" and assisting product exposure. While big titles (those 1GB+ demos) need the hefty investment the smaller demos and XBLA/Indie titles get to ride the coattails of the bigger investment that is already a sunk cost.

Sony puts the weight on devs to cough up for bandwidth is because Sony has put the pressure on developers/pubs where MS has shifted it toward consumers and adverts. Being bigger helps (levels costs) so the ultimate decision is where do you want your costs as a consumer. Do you want the integrated featureset and prolific media availability or do you want it free with a service that is servicable but clearly lagging behind XBL and the PC distribution systems and features? At the end of the day Sony has chosen it is best to push some of the burden off of them to pubs/devs. Maybe Sony has lower royalties, but for many business folks with the fiscal risk/reward of these online networks it would be a LOT better to pay a smaller higher margin on SALES than to pay for POTENTIAL SALES. If you told me 10% of sales and free bandwidth or 5% of sales and $1/GB, unless your platform is very proven and I KNOW I have a SMASH HIT I take the hit on actual sales instead of "hoping" I somehow beat the odds. If you are the small fish, as PSN surely is relatively, you want to entice content developers not turn them away.

Sony's talking points on bandwidth are weak; their real point should be: "We give away free online play. We support a basic network and we allow devs to choose their network choices and pay for them so it is the best fit for them. We also want pubs to be equal investors in online content and be part of PSN. it is a partnership moreso than a service. We want to cater to the best content partners who are willing to invest." And that sounds good, although it is hard to get "investors" when you are lagging behind. A cheaper console and growing feature parity should continue to dull this distinction.

 

[Acert93]

If it's a problem, Sony would have shut it down. It's not like they have not offended gamers before. ^_^

That or they cannot patch it. Or they are using it to their advantage (wouldn't be the first time a company winked at piracy).

Either way a platform that allows piracy of content, especially a fledgling one, isn't going to get developers really excited to jump on board, especially if you charge them for just trying (not success, just try).

 

[patsu]

Microsoft has the server infrastructure but it doesn't mean they can serve up content liberally. When demoes are first released, it will cause (big and small) spikes in traffic. Why is it a non-peak service automatically ?

As for the rest of your post, I have already said that instead of spending those subscription $$$ on demo bandwidth, they can spend it on something more worthwhile (e.g., contribute towards dedicated server infrastructure).

For Sony's PSN policy, I believe they would double the marketing budget of an exclusive PSN game to help market it (e.g., spend on demo bandwidth if it's effective for that game).

That or they cannot patch it. Or they are using it to their advantage (wouldn't be the first time a company winked at piracy).

Either way a platform that allows piracy of content, especially a fledgling one, isn't going to get developers really excited to jump on board, especially if you charge them for just trying (not success, just try).

There are PSN games that disable the sharing feature. So it should be well within their control. I assume the developers can talk to Sony about it ?

 

[makattack]

I'm trying to tell myself that this was a joke?


I don't think you comprehend the cost of setting up dedicated servers. Especially to host potentially millions of concurrent games. Especially considering the global scale.

I guarantee you the cost differential between the bandwidth costs to serve up demos (which are compensated for by increased purchases, guaranteed) and the cost to set up an acceptable amount of dedicated servers are different by dozens of orders of magnitude.

The more salient point here is that the demos do, absolutely, increase purchase rate. I'm one of many people who feel I need a demo of a game of some kind before I can buy it if it has no history -- either at a friend's house or via demo. I've purchased many XBLA games, but not a single PSN game. I don't even bother looking at the new releases on the PSN because I assume there will be no demo. No demo, no sale.

Add in the extra tricks like the "buy the game to unlock this achievement", and you've got a lot of people upgrading the demos to the full version. I'm fairly certain the bandwidth costs of serving the demos is compensated for, and then some, by the increased sales. It's not a sunk cost like you pretend it is.

I concur. I particularly dislike the lack of longevity for games with "dedicated servers" -- how many games are no longer playable on the EA repertoire because they've decided to "End Life" on support for those servers? Similarly, those games that never sold well. Just look at the Robot fighting game from Capcom on the 360. The one that required a $250 controller that barely fits a table top.

I actually knew a friend who purchased one of those behemoths and complained about them shutting down the servers. Maybe it was the original Xbox. Oh yes, just checked. So, yes... even the original XBox had games with dedicated servers -- they just are not popular due to the cost of support and maintenance. The game is called Steel Battalion -- and it's a "Mech" game - I said robot... I have no gaming cred.

This same friend still plays HALO 1 (the original) on-line -- using some contraption where game servers are hosted on PC's running a program that allows tunneling of the LAN traffic over the internet.

My recollection of this actually brings up an interesting point... it's not as well integrated as PSN, but using a software like: http://xbconnect.com/

Will essentially give you free online gaming on the 360 without XBL. The game appears to need to support LAN multiplayer and all your lobby, game matching functionality will have to be performed on the PC, but if you're willing to live without a unified system such as XBL, you can still play online with the 360 and original XBox.

 

[makattack]

More people will subscribe to Gold (or another premium tier) as a result of the dedicated servers. On top of that, MS can add in the savings from the wasted demo bandwidth. MS is building out their own CDN server network. It doesn't have to be as big without the liberal demo downloads.

You are missing the cost picture. Those who download and redownload freely without buying. Not all XBLA games are great too: http://flipthemedia.com/index.php/2008/05/xbox-live-might-delete-games/. It's wasteful to do demoes for low quality or low sales titles. In this incident, MS didn't even want these games to be listed. Let alone the demoes. Leave the developers to decide whether demo is good for them.

Do you have numbers to back your claim ?

I don't think the average gamer knows the difference between dedicated servers vs peer to peer games.

That article is old and outdated. MS decided against de-listing due to the outrage among the user and developer community -- in fact, it resulted in a run on people downloading poorly rated games just in case it happened. They ended up changing the console interface to make it easier to sort through the huge catalog. They also added a feature to their website to allow searches, end-user ratings, and most importantly, the ability to purchase, setup to download (demos, full games, etc) all XBL offerings from a web browser. This effectively negated any need to delist games to reduce clutter.