cthellis42
They certainly did. They invested $1+ billion in the project before they ever made the press announcement, just as people "invest" in any long-term strategy.
That's just my point man. I can see them investing 1 billion into it over time, sure. How much time, I really don't know. Personally, I don't see that happening unless the install bases increases. You don't go and spend the money to expand the hardware and software needed for millions of extra users when they know they can’t get online (even if they wanted to).
However the point I'm making is, "where did MS actually announce that they ALREADY spent a billion on Xbox live before it launched"? Like I said before, I didn’t see them state this anywhere. There's zero proof that that has happened. I'm arguing with the people that saying it's a failure and they ALREADY spent 1 billion dollars on it. They haven't stated how much it cost them out of the game, and the only thing they stated BEFFORE the launch was that they were spending 2 billion over 5 years on Xbox live and Xbox.
but they also mention "Microsoft representatives had already said the company would be spending $40 to $50 per game machine--which Microsoft already sells at a loss--to get the Xbox online service running."
Yes, "per Xbox" that JOINS the service. They aren't going to spend that money on the entire Xbox user base when they KNOW only a percentage of the user base are capable of getting online. This is the second point I'm making, comon sense, unless you think MS is stupid or something. If you disagree that something like this is not reasonable, well we can just stop talking about it.
Averaging that over their current installed base is, what? $450 million? And they're certainly not at the number of consoles they expect to be at by 2007 when they expect 10 million full subscribers.
You can average it over the total current user base, or the total user base from the time that article came out if you want, but looking at this logically, MS will not spend 40-50 dollars per Xbox when the entire fan base isn't capable of going online with broadband. Think about it, it's per Xbox that joins the Xbox live Service.
In reality you have no idea how much MS will spend unless they actually ANNOUNCE how much they're spending and give future figures. At the moment all signs point to "a lot." Just who is running factless at the moment?
I know that I don't know how much they will spend, all I can say is to use some common sense when looking at this logically, and come to your own conclusion. IAfter all I didn’t CLAIM that I already knew this to be a fact, and you didn’t see me state it as such! Now if you want to go on talking about who is "running fact less" you should be talking to Cybermerc and his claim that MS ALREDY SPENT 1 billion on Xbox live when he doesn't have any idea how much they already spent.
In reality Live is NOTHING like running a MMORPG,
In reality live is A LOT like running a MMORPG. I worked on online game for five years, and helped launch Massively Multiplayer games and technology for the PC. A lot of people were fooled from what live actually was due to the way MS PR talked about it. They made it seem like they were planning on running tons of game "servers" when they actually weren't planning that, and even frowned up on it.
as it is trying to coordinate and influence a host of developers and appeal to a broad swath of gamers in all sectors of gaming.
That's not the point. I'm talking about from the point of view of the people playing on Xbox live. From the users perspective this isn't really any different fro signing up for a MMORPG, and connecting to database severs that record your stats and finding and playing games with other people. The only real difference is that you can either play with 1 person to a maximum of 16 at a time, unless the game runs a dedicated server.
If a MMORPG publisher had expectations of getting to 10 million subscribers at $10 a month and could afford it, you could be DAMN sure a company would invest $1 billion over five years to get it operational.
There's no way it would cost that much. That's my point, it doesn't cost that much for massively multiplayer games to be run. For massively multiplayer games that are done correctly, you only ship as many units as the hardware is capable of supporting. That’s why so many MMORPG's have come out with tons of troubles (like WW2 online). This is what I’d suspect MS is doing, instead of hitting threshold for numbers and automatically adding more data servers.
Anyway, For the sake of the discussion, let's break this down into what a massively multiplayer service needs to be operational.
1. Game Servers (Hardware and software. Each single server runs a specified amount of users in this case it can be anywhere form 1000 to 10,000 depending on the game. and when you hit user threshold you add more servers.)
2. The billing system. (This is where credit card information is stores and recorded) this can be expensive if you don’t have a pre existing solution.
3. Database servers (Hardware and software. This is where the game data is stored)
4. Network Operation Centres (NOC's) close to the major internet backbone. This is necessary so the player’s don’t have to get a large number of hops before connecting to the service.
5. Labor (all the people running the network, and maintaining it). There's numbers been worked out for this. You expand the number of service employees per number of servers running.
6. Internet connection. (In the case of MMORPG's bandwidth is the most costly part of running a service.)
7. The creation of the game and online technology. (This is the most expensive and time consuming process. It can run anywhere from 5-million to 15 million to develop a working MMORPG.
Ok, now this is why I say it's similar to a massively multiplayer RPG from the users perspective. As the first 5 options I listed are what Xbox live uses. There are some small differences to what Microsoft is doing however, since this is a console service and all. Those exceptions are...
1. They don't have game servers in the traditional sense. There's a few titles that would actually run on MS hosted servers ( i can't think of any right now), and MS actually discouraged developers form setting up a server client structure in any thing but massively multiplayer games (this is why you're seeing limitations like 16 players in Xbox live titles.
2. The billing system is the Xbox live starter kit, and that connects you to web servers. On PC this would be done through a web browser. Either way, MS already used billing software, if I remember from researching this correctly; they use the Portal billing system (just like the MS gaming zone). They could write their own, but it may not be necessary. To use portal it can sots up to a few million dollars.
3. The database servers are basically the same as a multiplayer online RPG. Stats are store per user, and those stated can be retrieved by users. I'm sure they run this on MS database software, so the cost involved is probably only hardware and labor by itself.
4. Network operation centers, used for monitoring the network usage and server load, etc... This is similar to anything a PC publisher would do, but probably on a slightly larger scale.
5. Labor for running and maintaining the servers. This is the same as anything done by a PC publisher.
Some of the more costly things like bandwidth on Xbox live networks is much lower then you'd find from hosting a game like Everquest. On top of that MS owns their own ISP, so I'm sure they could work something out pretty cheap. On Xbox live users connected to the MS servers, and then disconnect and go peer-peer. So MS doesn't actually incur huge bandwidth costs like a MMORPG does. Their bandwidth usage comes from users connecting to database servers when they exit or finish a game and reconnect to the Xbox live service. The only game that could spike usage more would be Phantasy star online, but that may not even be hosted on MS run servers. When you think about it Xbox live is a glorified matchmaking system (like GameSpy) that doesn't incur it's own huge bandwidth costs.
(Of course since the total MMORPG population on the planet would in no way add up to 10 million, let alone getting that into one game, the point is moot.) Even assuming 1/4 goes out to bandwidth costs (when EQ was still $10 they mentioned that maintainance rate for bandwidth alone) that's still $75 million per MONTH to throw around. I doubt Live has the maintainance a MMORPG does, but I also think the setup costs are MUCH more.
There's no way Everquest costs 75 million per month in bandwidth. That game doesn't make 75 million in a year. Last i checked, the game bought in somewhere in the region of 25 million a year.
Microsoft is trying to bring about a bigger paradigm for consolling online and wants to profit from it. Problem is, they are dealing with the harsh realities of underestimating its draw, finding gamers who will pay at ALL, and constantly readjusting for what they WILL pay.
You’re right, that is what they are trying for console gaming, but don't think they don't already have a clue that broad band penetration is the biggest problem with getting people interested in Xbox live. They knew this long before launching Xbox live. I think you have a slightly strange perspective on this. MS hasn't “constantly†readjusted what gamers pay for the service. They took a survey from the Xbox live users to find out what they are willing to pay and the types of options we want ( i took part in the survey btw.). Then a few months back they announced the final pricing structure. It hasn't constantly changed. Btw, do you have Xbox live, because you would already know that?
And since we all know they are not going to abandon Live, what they have INVESTED stands and can be fully commented upon--I don't care what they have spent up until now.
Well what they have invested IS what they have spent up until. I do agree, that's not what I want to know also. I was only talking about how much some people claim it initially cost them to launch the service. I still don't see how it could be a billion dollars when the testing phase on consisted of 10 thousand users, and they only shipped 100,000 Xbox live kits when it launched.
