Why does Microsoft charge for online but not Sony?

I think it essentially comes down to features. I understand Live has a lot of community and friend features, not to mention the recent ability to create your own games and host them on the Live network (which will be huge for indi developers). PS3 online isn't really hurting Sony infrastructure wise, other than their online store its essentially up to the game developer to provide an online gaming system, where as Microsoft has a lot of interactive content setup and a standard online model that all games must abide by, which in turn Microsoft has to support and scale to.
 
I used to own a 360, I played online and grudgingly paid for XBL. I am a PC gamer and I know that I can easily play games for free. I have recently sold the 360 and bought a PS3. Both have distinct advantages over another, but ultimately free service wins in my book.

XBL is no where near flawless. Many a game would be laced with lag and bad connection problems. Overall most of the games we're fine, but every time I ran into a laggy game i thought, whats the point of paying for this? Also everyone I know with a 360 had to send it back at least once (rrod). Whats the point of a "service" when you cant even play games?

My experience with the PS3 is very similar to the 360. I'll occasionally run into a game with lag, but hey, its free, so thats the excuse. and overall most of my games are fine, fun, and free...

Its strange. When I was younger the closer something was to being free the better it was in my eyes. but now people believe that cost is equivalent to quality. But if i can get the same thing for free, then why would I pay for it?

So, my theory is this: MS makes people pay because it is the mainstream "hardcore" console. More people know the word "xbox live" rather than Playstation network. So they think that XBL is the standard for how things should be.

I hope HOME will be free...
 
The general gaming public doesn't really give a damn about all of the extra stuff XBL offers. They just want online gameplay, nothing more, nothing less, which Sony and Nintendo offer for free.
 
rfwinters77 said:
MS charges because idiots continue to pay for it. ;-)
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Yeah, us idiots pay for something someone developed.... They OWE us a free service, right?

When you create a decent service for millions to use, you can go ahead and give it to use for free.;)
 
Suck it up. If you own a Xbox 360 and are paying $49.99 a pop for each game, $5.00 / m or however much it is is quite a negligible expense, innit?
 
It's not a charity, someone has to pay for the development and maintenance costs of such a huge network infrastructure. Not to mention the bandwidth that voice chat and matchmaking probably requires 24/7/365. Sony decided to leave that up to the developers, just look at all the hoops you have to jump through to play an EA game online on ps3.
 
Here is a simple analogy I like to use.

Microsoft Live is like paying to go to a basketball summer camp.

PS3 Home(or whatever you want to call it) is like playing basketball in your driveway with a friend or two, for free.
 
TheGooch69 said:
Here is a simple analogy I like to use.

Microsoft Live is like paying to go to a basketball summer camp.

PS3 Home(or whatever you want to call it) is like playing basketball in your driveway with a friend or two, for free.
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Thats the perfect analogy. You get what you pay for or dont.
 
TheGooch69 said:
Here is a simple analogy I like to use.

Microsoft Live is like paying to go to a basketball summer camp.

PS3 Home(or whatever you want to call it) is like playing basketball in your driveway with a friend or two, for free.
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Well my experience with both services is more like this. PSN is like playing basketball with your friend in a driveway that may be yours, or may be theirs. Xbox Live is like playing basketball in a neighbor's driveway, which they charge you for whether you play or not, and sometimes it rains.
 
No no no.

Clearly each is a separate summer camp. Live is like a camp where you pay to enter, but there are plenty of activities to participate in and plenty of people to play with. If you are curious where your friends are a counselor will tell you without having to leave your current activity.

PSN is a free camp with not as many activities to enjoy, and not as many people to play it with since the majority of people are in the rec center watching Blu-ray movies. But hey it's free so who cares.
 
MMO should be priced the same way has live IMO. its wy i never played a MMO to begin with. too expensive weather LIVE is cheap
 
So let me get this straight-

You can't compair PC/PS3 system and Live because PC/PS3 games use servers, while Live is p2p.

So, with PC/PS3, someone is paying for the server. Yet you play nothing. In Live, Microsoft isn't paying for anything because the 360s are the servers, and they charge you. They charge you to be the server, while PC/PS3 does not.

And thats...ok?

I have a 360 (Elite \o/ ), and the only, ONLY thing I use Live for is playing online. All my friends I have on my PC, they just happen to be on my 360 too, but I don't really talk to them there. None of the extra features interest me, and the same goes for a lot of people. Playing online is important, and I don't like paying for something I can do for free on any other platform.

And yes, I'm looking into getting a PS3.
 
LOL at these analogies. The only games i played online have been flawless. Resistance.. UT3.. COD4.. and warhawk. Do i have to pay for them?.. no. At least i dont have to pay for the P2P that COD4 does on my PStree.

You pay to play MMOs because of the experience and the sheer randomness of what you can do on the servers. Seeing hundreds of people in an area is pretty amazing when you play. Buuuut youll never know because youll never try it out.
 
At the end of the day on Subscription live youre:
a) Paying to connect to your friends easily
b) Paying to have an all in one fancy highscore system (Gamerscore/Rep)
c) Paying to use your bandwidth or your friends bandwidth that you/your friend are already paying for in the first place!

On Totally Free PSN youre:
a) Finding it annoying that its a little harder to find friends on the network when your in game but hey its free!
b) It Sucks because there is no high score/rep system in place yet
c) Your paying for your own bandwidth naturally but on the top end games your playing on mostly lag free dedicated servers!


And about the Comment someone made about "just look at all the hoops you have to jump through to play an EA game online on ps3" the only hoop i see to get on an EA server is pressing X once initially to connect to EA Servers. Now if its worth your money not to have that then your either very lazy or you have money to burn and i bet if you have a car its an automatic and you fly first class if your moderately wealthy! :rolleyes:
I know you all only say its $x/per month for live but over 6-7 years thats a new console! Thats the way i look at it, I Look at the long term.
 
Paying for p2p is pretty dumb... What kinda service charges you a monthly fee and then still exposes you to advertisements. (if there are others, they suck too) XBL is a huge rip off, one day, most of you will realize this. Until then, keep wasting your money.
 
thats true, paying for p2p is bloody stupid. is it realy trye that ps3 has dedticated servers? in there racing games like F1 and GT5 prologue, can you play on dedicated servers that allow more then 8 players to race unlike the shitty forza only allowing 8 players at a time lol.

And teh comment made about ea servers, its teh same process in xbox 360, you have to connect to the ea servers similar to the ps3.

MMO should be priced cheaper imo though. i do like the idea of MMO and have recently started playing sims online the free version and it like the concept of it. IMO the game itself should be free to download and just let us pay to play in monthly. for example with WOW you have to buy the game and then buy the subscription to play it lol
 
yamahaSHO said:
Yeah, us idiots pay for something someone developed.... They OWE us a free service, right?

When you create a decent service for millions to use, you can go ahead and give it to use for free.;)
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Free?

You already paid MS for the hardware your using. You paid your ISP for the bandwidth your using. You already paid the developers when you bought the game. You've already paid for everything once, now you have to pay MS again to let you use them together.

Battle.net has been offering a better service for free for over a decade.

An analogy would be someone coming out with a new search engine inferior to Google but charging people to use it.
 
Yes..the sheep will be led to slaughter..

Funny how MS is having a hard time convincing PC gamers to subscribe to Live..On the 360,you dont have a choice..No pay no play...
 
I think that people should not bring in 'PC gaming is free" arguments into this.

Wouldn't it be good to just get opinions about the direct comparison of consoles and answer the OP's question.

Here's another argument: Why can you game online with PS3 and Wii, SSBB, for free and not Live? Have you tried playing SSBB online sometimes? I've experienced lagging from people who are only an hour away from me. Terrible if you ask me.

Here's another good thing about Live, you can report bad players, give other players bad feedback to lower the chances of partying up with them, in Halo 3 my friend explains, and just the fact that no other CONSOLE can offer the same online service as the 360.
 
hah, don't even bring Nintendo into this. Their online implementation is laughable at best.
 
wopsang said:
I think that people should not bring in 'PC gaming is free" arguments into this.

Wouldn't it be good to just get opinions about the direct comparison of consoles and answer the OP's question.

Here's another argument: Why can you game online with PS3 and Wii, SSBB, for free and not Live? Have you tried playing SSBB online sometimes? I've experienced lagging from people who are only an hour away from me. Terrible if you ask me.

Here's another good thing about Live, you can report bad players, give other players bad feedback to lower the chances of partying up with them, in Halo 3 my friend explains, and just the fact that no other CONSOLE can offer the same online service as the 360.
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Your flaw in this approach, is that consoles are trying to become standardized PC's, wait they basically are. Console gaming online basically mimics what PC gaming is doing, and as PC progresses so does consoles. Most of the features you have in XBL are there, because of the PC.

Although I think PSN is a great feature, I didn't get my console because of it. I got my console because of the games coming to it as well as BR movies. PSN being free is an added bonus for me, because I wouldn’t have paid for it, if it wasn’t free.
 
You get what you pay for, Xbox Live is so much superior to PS3 Home and there is your reason.
 
Microsoft has the best online service right now, and neither Nintendo or Sony can offer anything to compete with it, so Microsoft can indeed charge $50/yr and get their asking price for it. Once Sony releases Home, this could change. I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft drop the charge if/once Home becomes widespread, as Microsoft will really have nothing to offer over Home (actually, it will be offering far less than Home). The biggest thing hurting Sony's online right now is the lack on in-game XMB, and that's a price worth paying for, IMO.

shaunh20 said:
You get what you pay for, Xbox Live is so much superior to PS3 Home and there is your reason.
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So I take it you've used Home and seen Sony's implementation of in-game XMB? Oh wait...no, you're just talking shit. GTFO.

Here's another argument: Why can you game online with PS3 and Wii, SSBB, for free and not Live? Have you tried playing SSBB online sometimes? I've experienced lagging from people who are only an hour away from me. Terrible if you ask me.
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Eh? That has more to do with how the game's online implementation has coded, and nothing to do with Nintendo's infrastructure. Having SSBB on Live would not help it one bit. Go try Gears of War on Live and tell me how bad the lag is (hint: it's pretty terrible).
 
ex0du5 said:
Microsoft has the best online service right now, and neither Nintendo or Sony can offer anything to compete with it, so Microsoft can indeed charge $50/yr and get their asking price for it. Once Sony releases Home, this could change. I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft drop the charge if/once Home becomes widespread, as Microsoft will really have nothing to offer over Home (actually, it will be offering far less than Home). The biggest thing hurting Sony's online right now is the lack on in-game XMB, and that's a price worth paying for, IMO.



So I take it you've used Home and seen Sony's implementation of in-game XMB? Oh wait...no, you're just talking shit. GTFO.



Eh? That has more to do with how the game's online implementation has coded, and nothing to do with Nintendo's infrastructure. Having SSBB on Live would not help it one bit. Go try Gears of War on Live and tell me how bad the lag is (hint: it's pretty terrible).
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Good to know that you can justify paying $50 a year for terrible lag.
 
Baker said:
Good to know that you can justify paying $50 a year for terrible lag.
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I don't. I don't even own a 360. However, the fact that Gears has terrible lag on Live has absolutely nothing to do with Live itself. It has to do with the game's netcode, which is among the worst netcode I've seen in a game. You actually have to aim way ahead of the person to hit him. The netcode is somewhat comparable to that of Halo CE on the PC. My point was, that while both Gears and Smash Bros can be quite laggy, it has nothing to do with the service, and more to do with how the game's netcode was implemented.

Games like Halo 3 and CoD4 has very good netcode, and perform perfectly on Live (CoD4 performs just as good on PSN though).

When you pay for Live, you're paying for their social networking, online infrastructure, and the ability to play games online. While I don't think the cost is justified, if I had a 360, I would not be opposed to paying it. There's simply no good alternative, unfortunately, and that's why Microsoft can justify to charge for the service...people are willing to pay.

I do think it's terrible that all their games are P2P, though. Warhawk and UT3 have much better implementation, where you can freely run dedicated servers off your PS3 (or off your PC in UT3's case).
 
Baker said:
Your flaw in this approach, is that consoles are trying to become standardized PC's, wait they basically are. Console gaming online basically mimics what PC gaming is doing, and as PC progresses so does consoles. Most of the features you have in XBL are there, because of the PC.

Although I think PSN is a great feature, I didn't get my console because of it. I got my console because of the games coming to it as well as BR movies. PSN being free is an added bonus for me, because I wouldn’t have paid for it, if it wasn’t free.
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But why is Live a paid service? You haven't touched that in your reply.

jonneymendoza said:
so banning players is worthy of paying for xbox LIVE? LOL
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No but the other numerous features that I've mentioned in my other post makes Live payment worthy.

prtzlboy said:
hah, don't even bring Nintendo into this. Their online implementation is laughable at best.
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I agree with you fully.
 
ex0du5 said:
Microsoft has the best online service right now, and neither Nintendo or Sony can offer anything to compete with it, so Microsoft can indeed charge $50/yr and get their asking price for it. Once Sony releases Home, this could change. I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft drop the charge if/once Home becomes widespread, as Microsoft will really have nothing to offer over Home (actually, it will be offering far less than Home). The biggest thing hurting Sony's online right now is the lack on in-game XMB, and that's a price worth paying for, IMO.



So I take it you've used Home and seen Sony's implementation of in-game XMB? Oh wait...no, you're just talking shit. GTFO.



Eh? That has more to do with how the game's online implementation has coded, and nothing to do with Nintendo's infrastructure. Having SSBB on Live would not help it one bit. Go try Gears of War on Live and tell me how bad the lag is (hint: it's pretty terrible).
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ROFL Gears of War does not have terrible lag infact I dont have any problems with lag. I am going to take a guess that your internet sucks.... and I feel that you are incorrect about SSBB on Live would not help.... The netcode for live must be built into the developer kit so if that is the case then SSBB would be using Microsofts netcode and not Nintendos netcode which as of right now nintendo doesnt have much experice in that area YET...
 
I am just down to a PS3 and a Wii now, however I had XBL subscription from the launch of original XBox service (Mechassault!) right up through the 360. Honestly I did not use the friends features a lot or care about achievements with the 360, I just wanted to go online and play games once in a while. For my usage, ther PS3 service is much better since I can do the same thing for free. Basically people are paying $50/year for a buddy list on XBL right now. The only reason MS charges for it is because people keep paying for it. Online play was new and special with the original XBox, and people got the headset when they dropped down $60 for one year of XBL so it did not seem too bad. There is no good argument for why MS charges for XBL now, they just make a ton of money on it so they keep doing it. Then not only do people happily pay for XBL, then MS fills it up with ads and tries to nickel and dime everyone to death by charging for icons and backgrounds. Keeping tabs on a buddy list is not some hard to implement service that MS needs to keep getting paid for so they can keep the servers running. I am getting another 360 again soon, however I have no plans to be signing up for XBL again, especially with PS Home coming.
 
As someone who actually owns both consoles (which i see most people in here talking shit don't have either) both have their benefits but honestly its not even fair to compare the two right now with the incomplete state of PSN. Maybe when home is finished and ingame xmb are working we can talk, but honestly the ease of everything on xbox live surpasses what sony offers right now.

Xbox live can cost a fee simply because everything just works, if i turn on my 360 right now and throw a game in, I get an invite from a friend, accept it, and im in the game with them, able to talk to them with voice chat, and while yes one of us might be hosting it ourselves, the fact that we didn't have to mess around to find a server, and hope we both actually get in makes it worth it.

And with large groups or clans? Please, the fact that in something like COD4 we can all get into a party with each other and we are in the same game no matter what? Hell sometimes it actually works smoother than what you can do on a pc.

Ontop of that we get voice chat, one friend list across everything, and nothing about lives functions requires you to be in the same game, if i want to talk to my friend while im playing madden, and he is playing forza, i can and it works.

Thats why MS can justify charging and people will pay it, everything works, and its easy to do what you want.

PSN is nice, dont get me wrong, i love how warhawk plays with the server list and for the most part the online service is great, but it just simply lacks features right now, though they are fixing it little by little. Make no mistake though, if sony feels they have a product that can compete with XBL they will charge for it. Both companies are in the business of making money.
 
Ontop of that we get voice chat, one friend list across everything, and nothing about lives functions requires you to be in the same game, if i want to talk to my friend while im playing madden, and he is playing forza, i can and it works.
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You could talk to them anyway, just use a real phone! Then when one of you get RROD'd off the net, you can keep talking :p

I kid, I kid :D
 
I love it when people say PC gaming is free. I would wager that 95% of the servers for PC gamers are run at the expense of the community, either in hardware/network costs or fees to hosting companies. Just because the majority of gamers are freeloaders does not mean the service is completely free thanks to the magic of the interwebs.

Same goes with Sony, if their service does indeed catch up to Live and have millions of active gamers, they will not continue to let it come out of their pocket. They will find a way to pass the charge on to the community, whether it be designating PS3s as servers becoming a widespread feature, or a pay per use premium model. As others have said the only reason it's free now is due to the fact they are in catch-up mode, and it isn't worth paying for.
 
MS stole the idea from xfire and that shit is FREE yes FREE :) steam has a similar thing too. LIVE is good but should be free
 
ocellaris said:
You could talk to them anyway, just use a real phone! Then when one of you get RROD'd off the net, you can keep talking :p

I kid, I kid :D
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you know, when my xbox rrrod it was almost kinda like that..buddy called me to play some halo 3, i went to turn on the console while talking to him, and i saw red blinky :<
 
dedicated servers have a cost because it reduces lag a hell of a lot and lets lot of players join in a game. have fun playing forza on a 8 player race while i be enjoying a thrilling 20+ players online in rfactor lag free and no immature muppets ruining the race
 
jonneymendoza said:
dedicated servers have a cost because it reduces lag a hell of a lot and lets lot of players join in a game. have fun playing forza on a 8 player race while i be enjoying a thrilling 20+ players online in rfactor lag free and no immature muppets ruining the race
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So somehow free servers have less muppets? Your logic is flawed. Although I suppose with invincible cars it is much harder to ruin a race. ;)
 
dwk said:
ROFL Gears of War does not have terrible lag infact I dont have any problems with lag. I am going to take a guess that your internet sucks.... and I feel that you are incorrect about SSBB on Live would not help.... The netcode for live must be built into the developer kit so if that is the case then SSBB would be using Microsofts netcode and not Nintendos netcode which as of right now nintendo doesnt have much experice in that area YET...
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Gears of War's netcode is terrible. End of story.

Most good shooters implement some sort of extralpolation feature, where the game's client approximates the opponents locations by taking in their previous location and direction of movement, etc...Gears on the other hand, does not extrapolate. Where you see the opponents on your screen, is where their last known location was. If you have 50ms of ping, and your opponent has 200ms of ping, then that means that the host is getting the opponents location 200ms after the opponent, and then you are receiving it 50ms later. With your opponent being 250ms off of his actual location, you're going to have a hard time hitting him.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl works slightly differently. When you input a command, it synchronizes the input command with all players, and then proceeds to execute that command. That means that if the latency is high at all, then you're going to have a large amount of input lag. While this solution doesn't feel very fluid, it has one particular advantage: what you see on your screen is 100% what is happening in the battle (unlike most online games where the position of your enemies is simply approximated). This is really the only good solution for implementing fighting games, since any other solution leaves too much of the battle up to the chance that your opponents extrapolated location and actions is actually what is happening.
 
IcedEmotion said:
So somehow free servers have less muppets? Your logic is flawed. Although I suppose with invincible cars it is much harder to ruin a race. ;)
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more muppets. too many kids play xbox and therefore ruin online play no matter what game they play.

most kids dont have the brains to operate and play the latest games on a pc let alone afford one that plays games decently.
 
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