New Xbox Live prices: $59.99 and $69.99

[MechanizedDeath]

Good post, Acert. I agree with the points you made. I hope MMO games are free. I know what you said, I'm gonna hold out hope regardless. I'll also be saddened if EA goes ahead and makes BF2 ppv. The cost issue is what has kept a lot of people like myself away from persistent online games. With so many deep single-player games still available, there's no great need to open my wallet to pay for an online game. Once you get a taste of freedom, it's pretty hard to go back. PEACE.

 

[TrungGap]

Yeah, it's really hard to justify monthy charges...Blizzard claims that by paying monthly, you will continue to get quarterly updates and it's basically the same as paying for expansion pack. However, WOW was slow in releasing new content...Take Guild Wars (which has no monthly charge), though it's not a MMO in a classical term, however the company has released new area (content) and updates (streamed) to all for free. However, future expansion will cost money. My point, the argument of monthly payment is to foot the develpment of new content. But why should I front the money? Am I making any sense? Or am I rambling on?

 

[Paul_G]

But I'm more looking for some insight from the people who do use Live, as you what sets it apart and makes it a justifiable expense.

Well I use live almost every day, have done for over 2 years, and in my experience, it is worth every bit of the £40/$50 that is charged for it. The best thing i can liken it to is mobile phones. You could carry around a basic phone, a camera, an mp3 player and a personal organiser. If you are serious about your work, your music, your phone calls and your pictures, it may well be a decent compromise, to be sure, one device for one job is better than jack of all trades, master of none, but you can now get mobiles that do all of that and for the average person, that is much more convenient. I don't want to use MSN/AIM, plus run a game, plus buy a headset separately, plus re-learn things for every game on the PC.

On Live, for the most part every interface is the same, or at least glaringly obvious. All games work out of the box, no config need. All games use the headset, so it will always get used. All games have access to the same central friends list, I can invite someone across games; I can leave messages for them, there is so many things I can do in one package that unless you use MSN and a headset for skype etc regardless of gaming, they are just a hassle.

Not only that, but although Live suffers from its fair share of idiots like everything else in life, a paid for service is a real incentive to not be a moron. The community is great, and because of the friends list, changing games doesn't mean you lose touch.

As far as i'm concerned, i'm not paying my £40 for something technical like hosting, i'm paying the money for access to a club, and by doing that, i'm with other paying customers who want what i want; a good game.

 

[one]

Don't forget there are alternatives to XBOXLive, you CAN play for free if you use programs like XB Connect.
http://www.xbconnect.com/

XBConnect registerd 500 new accounts today alone, has nearly 800,000 user accounts and has hosted over 12 million games. As of right now it has ~5500 players online.

Wow that's impressive. It requires no modding, right?

But in Xbox 360, if Microsoft starts to update the handshaking protocol in the blackboxed firmware I guess it'll get difficult to spoof it.

 

[wco81]

One thing which you haven't taken into account, though, is Xbox Live uses P2P to host servers. MS don't wear server costs other than for the "pluses" such as user messaging, friends lists, etc.

I'd rather not have these things and be able to directly connect to a friend's Xbox to play Halo3/PGR3 for free. Simple reason is, I want to play games. The rest is fluff, though the option is great for those who use it.

Exactly.

Most of the online gaming I do is with sports games. EA does their own servers and XBL just hands off its members to EA so there's no XBL value added there.

I don't play MMOs so most of the online gaming I would do wouldn't require servers. The XBL subscription is the biggest obstacle to my getting the X360. Haven't completely ruled it out yet but if the PS3 maintains a free online model, that gives it a big leg up for me.

I can easily afford XBL but I don't want to pay for glorified messaging and matchmaking.

Now if Sony tries to charge or if EA tries to charge, then I will have to consider finding another hobby. Really, they could provide no matchmaking at all whatsoever and I would be content with entering IP addresses for people I'd find to play on forums or IM services.

 

[NavNucST3]

Look, this is all pretty simple, everyone will have a 30-day trial of Gold, from there you can decide if Live! is a valuable resource for you. This debate is going to end up like the HDD debate, if you haven't ever used live maybe you shouldn't speculate on how useful/useless it is to you.

Having used every tunneling SW on my xbox, none of them offer the across the board ease of use that Live offers. I also wish people would stop comparing what we have available to us as modded xbox owners to that of the xbox360, it is an unfair comparison, because what you see coming in the xbox360 is made to be better than the original unmodified xbox, and in my eyes it wins hands-down.

Live! is a fabulous service for ME, and according to the ebgames site, your looking at $50 for a 12month card plus one free month, so essentially you have 14months of Gold for $50, sorry but that doesn't seem like a bad deal to me.

 

[TrungGap]

Wow that's impressive. It requires no modding, right?

No modding is required.

But in Xbox 360, if Microsoft starts to update the handshaking protocol in the blackboxed firmware I guess it'll get difficult to spoof it.

It's basically a tunneling software. So, I imagine it would be really hard (near impossible) for MS to change the *handshake* so that it would not work with something like xbconnect or xlink. Remember for this to work, games must support system link....

With all this said and done...It still doesn't measure up to XBL. XBL is more of a complete package, not just easier to user. It integrates seamlessly into the game. Not to mention, you don't have to deal with latency due to rerouting.

 

[Sis]

Live can have dedicated servers IIRC, but apparently no one has paid MS to make that happen.

Black Hawk Down supports 50 player multiplayer through dedicated servers over Xbox Live.

.Sis