NPD March 2008
- Thread starter iceberg187
- Start date
both, yes
it is an appeal because of the ease of use, solid integration for simple online play and more importantly. their friends are on the service saying that it rocks. the only (mostly) people that complain about LIVE or the cost involved, are from those who do not use it.
as for driving software... absolutely ... due to lots of achievements and complete, across the board, live integration, the friends list in the dash constantly displays details of all the games they are playing (and exactly what level and activity within the game) and friends referrals and invites to play, all drive the desire to own a game IMO
The one doing the flaming is you. You made a blanket assertion with nothing to defend your point. When you got called out on it, you repeated the exact same pointless gesture.
If you're going to attack the 360 as a media center, why don't you defend it instead of just blindly flaming? I can think of a laundry list of pros and cons for both systems that on balance are pretty even if you look at it today (most particularly that 360 today has better content distribution, better content organization [although neither one is great], and better integration with the system (excluding the actual Media Center app, which needs serious work). The PS3 provides a way more robust set of options for managing content, and on the whole is probably more reliable at connecting to media on PC's than the 360 overall at the expense of having basically no distribution model, being hard to set up, and being a pain to navigate).
The context of the current discussion comes from the following quote:
This spawned a comparison of Live's free services as compared to Home.
I agree that long-term, both platforms will have similar services. IMO, the next logical direction for these two networks is a music store. Both companies are well-positioned to offer this on the console. Beyond that? Well, the console generation will have run its course soon after that, and we'll have to see what becomes possible with the next hardware platforms.
I have trouble imagining what further online services could be added, but let me throw this out there:
The next big thing might be a persistent online world that is based on a franchise. I could easily imagine the "Wii 2" having an integrated "Mario World Online" where your "Mii" character is a fully unique cartoon avatar. It could offer everything that Club Penguin or Second Life or Home offer, but with the killer attraction of a famous franchise painted on top. All of Nintendo's first-party games could integrate into this online world. This, to me, is what Home is missing - the face of a killer franchise.
BTW: Will Sony's movie/TV service offer non-Sony titles? Has there been any indication about this?
This spawned a comparison of Live's free services as compared to Home.
I agree that long-term, both platforms will have similar services. IMO, the next logical direction for these two networks is a music store. Both companies are well-positioned to offer this on the console. Beyond that? Well, the console generation will have run its course soon after that, and we'll have to see what becomes possible with the next hardware platforms.
I have trouble imagining what further online services could be added, but let me throw this out there:
The next big thing might be a persistent online world that is based on a franchise. I could easily imagine the "Wii 2" having an integrated "Mario World Online" where your "Mii" character is a fully unique cartoon avatar. It could offer everything that Club Penguin or Second Life or Home offer, but with the killer attraction of a famous franchise painted on top. All of Nintendo's first-party games could integrate into this online world. This, to me, is what Home is missing - the face of a killer franchise.
BTW: Will Sony's movie/TV service offer non-Sony titles? Has there been any indication about this?
I think the bigger reason you're likely to see XBL drive sales vs PSN is simply discoverability.
I don't know how PSN attach rates are now, but I know last year I saw some scary stats that the vast majority of PS3 owners didn't even know that it had an online component at all.
One thing MS got right with Live is that it's pretty much impossible to use the console without knowing that you can connect to Live. They have a fantastic attach rate on it. Having that gives the potential for a ripple effect (I want to play online with my friends, they have Live, so I need it).
I think it's also a pretty reasonable assumption to say that Live (and probably achievements in particular) is driving game sales. Achievements were quite possibly one of the most brilliant attach drivers in the history of the industry. Even terribly rated games have managed to do decently on the system if only by selling to achievement addicts.
aaronspink
Veteran
Aka they both suck so bad it isn't worth discussing!
I didn't follow the thread history far enough.Hmm... it is still possible for both consoles to last quite a while.
Argh, if they take that route, they are simply building yet another franchise. The industry is still "stucked" in the title business. Home is not intended to be a killer franchise. There are room for other kinds of experience for casuals (e.g., Just like Wii, Home applications may make mundane everyday tasks interesting and fun). And it doesn't have to be for Playstation only.
Sony can also integrate Home into their consumer eletronics supply chain. e.g., Warranty checking, upgrades, upselling, customer service, etc. can be performed in Home. In effect, every Sony appliance owner has an account there. This will require significant automation in their back office. Some sort of CBA will be needed (vs cost saving in customer service and more effective sales & marketing).
I developed a simple Flash prototype to convert every website into a building automatically. The shape, size and other attributes of the buildings depend on the content and dynamic behaviour (e.g., traffic, updated-ness) of the site. Some of these information can be retrieved from google maps, alexa, etc. This helps to visualize say, google search result in various/multiple dimensions. You can even see people entering/leaving the site and talk to them if the right integration is done (as I did). Unfortunately, I ran into limitations of Flash and hasn't continued since then. About 6 months later, Sony announced Home (They obviously started years before me).
Think about Playstation School/University and other "serious games" in Home.
Imagine making movies with the Crackle folks and other gamers, meeting celebrities and backstage people from Sony Pictures.
Participate in E3, Gamer Days, and TGS virtually in Playstation Home. Enter mini-game competitions in exclusive theme park areas and buy/win discounted tickets to SeaWorld, DisneyWorld, LegoLand, Universal Studio, etc.
There is also P2P/C2C commerce which everyone talked about, but has not delivered yet. If you sit down and think about it, I am sure you can come up with a lot of possibilities.
Of course it will include as complete a selection as possible.
Otherwise, it won't make business sense and they don't have to negotiate with external studios in the first place.
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If you're friends are mostly 360 users it's normal that you choice 360 over another console, but same goes for PS3 as well. Little to do with how Live rocks.
I cannot honestly imagine an objective person believing people are buying 360s because of Live, paid online gaming, cross game invites, achievements, peer reviews or whatever.
Even PSN we like downplaying has more marketability than anything Live offers.
Of course, I'm excluding current or ex 360 owners as Live may very well keep them on 360 or buy another one when their consoles break out of warranty.
As some smart guy put it nicely before, that may be why they don't use it.
That's not a joke though.
I'm curious have you ever heard of anyone buying 360 for Live itself?
I know many who didn't buy it because of it.
And I should know as it was a factor on my decision at the time when PSN was even more miserable.
What about a person who never experienced achievement whoreness before, buying a 360 for achievements?
As for driving software sales, I agree it's a reasonable assumption, but looking at attach rates isn't enough to come up with a conclusion.
One of the reasons I bought the 360 is because of Live, but mostly it was because of games.
I'd be curious to know how those games-per-year figures were arrived at, but because of the Wii's disproportionately high monthly hardware sales you also have a disproportionate number of new console owners, which will drive any attach rate down. Any analysis based on attach rate without factoring in the average "length of time owned" isn't very conclusive, IMO.
To provide some context, here's a listing of the lifetime attach rate for some historical consoles I found.
If you just looked at those numbers without having any other context you would probably draw some very wrong conclusions about the software sales on those platforms.
What was the regular attach rates for each console?
We can probably come up with a better estimate than that.
my point being that they complain of the cost without owning it, but after doing so, they do not complain anymore because most see the cost as a fair exchange for the services.
While that may be absolutely true -though I wouldn't know as heavily biased internet forum discussions are not exactly good places to hunt honest criticism-,
I think people who complain before owning are more relevant to console wars discussions than people who are satisfied after.
That again comes to marketability of Live.
Still I wouldn't mind a Live price satisfaction poll among 360 owners.
When I have regular people (non hardcore - the "masses" ) over and I tell them that I need to pay 54€ (85$) a year just to play online there is always disbelief. Even if I tell them about all the features.
I think Live is great for competive people. It has some great "e-penis" features (that PSN lacks) but for example that is something that doesn't say much to me.
But I have also a coussin that spends hour and hours trying to improve his online ranks and for such a person I think live wins it everydag against PSN (in its current form)
I think Live is great for competive people. It has some great "e-penis" features (that PSN lacks) but for example that is something that doesn't say much to me.
But I have also a coussin that spends hour and hours trying to improve his online ranks and for such a person I think live wins it everydag against PSN (in its current form)
Live is great if you have friends. Playing together is a payed-for extra. The unified element is key and free and certainly 'e-penis'. With 'e' meaning essential of course.
This message is brought to you by a non-competitive low gamerscore social guy.
I agree with what Pipo says. I only have Live Silver (the free variant) and I still think it's great. I don't feel the need of console multiplaying since I can do that on my PC. Still, I enjoy friendslist to chat with people, compare gamerscore, messaging and all the other functionality. Moreover, I've still spent many points on XBLA and some series (when they hadn't implemented region locking yet). IMO, the whole argument of free versus payed is not painting the whole picture, since not everyone needs multiplayer but can enjoy all Live's other features.
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
Live has value to consumers. It's part of the value proposition. I don't know how anyone could think it ISN'T a factor in some peoples decision on which console to get. Live sells X360s. Not as much as the great games, but it definitely factors into decisions. It's foolish to think otherwise IMO.
It's all about perception. My brother pays six times the monthly cost of Live Gold for some crappy IP-TV solution for channels he never watches. Instead he's always playing COD 4 or Forza 2 online whenever we're online at the same time. Yet, he does nothing but bitch about the price of Live Gold.
IMO, the cost of Live Gold is set well below the pain threshold for the vast majority of XBOX 360 users (ie. you spend 5-10 times as much money each year on Arcade games and DLC).
Cheers
