Do You Know Why Microsoft Charges For Xbox Live?

Right on cue Sony to increase the price of a PSN subscription by 33% on Aug 1st.

How can you compare xbox live to things like groceries,power etc?

Those things are necessities,xbox live isn't.Come back in a few years time when you moved out of your parents & have to make your own way in the world.

It's easy to make comments like that & call people "cry babies" when mummy & daddy pay for everything & show's how clueless you can be.

 

@Badger: Eurogamer are saying it's a 25% price hike which takes effect from August 31.

Kinda makes me queasy knowing full well that I'm buying a new console from them and the pack-in game is Destiny 2, which correct me if I'm wrong is only playable online? Which means either I pony up for another hefty subscription or otherwise leave the game
in its wrapper and trade it in on day one? Not exactly a fan of Destiny, but was willing to give it a try. Is it worth another sub? *cringes*

 

Yeah,my mistake.Just come back to correct that but you beat me to it

Destiny is online only so you would need a PS Plus account to play it.

 

Unless you are eager to buy games on day 1 released - you get 2-3 AAA games for that cost. These fully of your own choice.

So wait 6,12 or 18 months and you buy for 1/2->1/3 of cost or so.

When I bought X1 last september there were I am Alive, if it was for October. Only game I was curious of, the rest were really small kids games.

And the free trial for Gold would not let me play games anyway.

And terms change at any time for Xbox.

Once, 3-4 years ago or so, there were something you needed to accept new terms.

I said no first, but could not get updates or anything.

I thought I save some time reading and trying to understand these lengthy agreements - but no go.

And it's the same with Live Gold - it changes over time what is included and terms for "free" games. So every time you renew it's probably new terms.

As it is now, you don't own any games with Gold, just free to play as long as you pay for Live Gold.

If public opinion really were that Live Gold is such a catch, MS would not need to do all these freebies with trials and even put $1 on your account if you try it.

Live Gold is a business, and we must regard it as such. It's supposed to make money and even better if they can make you dependent on it enough to pay year after year.

And reading forum you can see people getting all upset they can't get their card accepted for registration, once removed - they seems to think Live Store is the only way to buy games.

If Live Gold offered discount to any game, in such a way it was cheaper than retail. But it always is about double cost as retail, 50-100% higher prices.

And let's say unknowing people wanting to give a Gift Card to somebody, this poor person getting it cannot use it to pay for Live Gold - and you wonder why?

Who makes these strange rules?

So buying an Xbox to start with is a gamble, because conditions may change so you don't accept the terms anymore.

And that anybody buy games from Live Store is total mystery - at those prices. They obviously have more money than sense - or parents pay.

So it's a lot to do with convenience. Instant gratification - Press buy and a couple of hours download and you can play.

Looking at behavior research that is how 5 year olds work - they have a real hard time with delayed gratification - like buy in a store and get it the next day.

So if MS wonder why adults are less eager to pay for Gold - maybe adjust terms and condition to how adults work.

For kids money is just something that parents give you when you ask.

 

I didn't know partying and takeaways are a necessity. I thought by the maturity level of your posts, you didn't do such a thing XD.

 

You have one physical machine that has the processor, the storage, the RAM, etc. On that one physical machine you have 24 pieces of software that think they are physical machines. Each of those virtual machines tap into the same resource pool, that of the
physical server.

The person looking over that software governing those servers dictates what resources they can access of the physical hardware.

Given that the Xbox division is the least profitable part of Microsoft's business, I can't imagine they are going to be allowing the lions share.

 

Where did I say they were? I don't go "partying" & haven't done for years,probably long before you were born.Takeaways are a treat that I rarely have even though I live 100 yards from a Chinese takeaway.I have things like food,bills etc. to pay for.Judging
by your childish comments you are going to be in for one big shock when you leave home & have to support your self.

 

That's a very *erudite* response, but at the same time how do you know for a fact that Xbox isn't profitable? Fifty-three million users (built upon a very solid subscriber base) would suggest otherwise. Additionally, I can't quite get my head around the
division of labor as regards those thousands upon THOUSANDS of servers, but even if the layperson was to divide 'X' amount of physical servers by software sub-routines, that's still a *lot* of physical space (therefore: expense) required, no?

 

"expense required right"

From what I read server banks at tax payer expense are being built worldwide, but not even Governors are allowed to attend the ribbon cutting.

Just for our edification, does MS not give gobernments (except local and state) full access to not only those servers, but everything contained within them?

Personal and collective information is the most lucrative piece of property the world has ever known. Who pays for those servers? Well thats the beauty of it. Whether you're a gamer or don't even own a PC. John Q Public pays for it through taxation. MS profits
from it through customer gullibility.

 

I can see we have a misunderstanding. I didn't say that their gaming division was not profitable, I said it was the least profitable. It does make money and that at least puts it above Bing and Surface which from all reports actually make a loss. I wasn't
clear in what I wrote and I apologise for that.

Also you are correct, those servers would be expensive but I'm afraid that doesn't change the question of why the Gold fee is NEEDED for online play on the console but not on Xbox Live for PC. It doesn't explain how Valve can offer the same service at no cost
to their user-base. Remember that both Microsoft and Valve are acting as a gatekeeper for online play on other companies servers or for a P2P connection. It's only really their own first party games they host the servers for.

Both companies manage the sale of games on their storefront and take a healthy slice of the money taken for each game. Both companies provide voice and text chat.

Yet only Microsoft NEED a fee to provide the service.

Please note this isn't me saying Xbox Live is a bad service, I think it is great. It's simply a discussion about whether a fee should be required.

 

It should be required to stop people creating multiple accounts.

It is not only Microsoft who do this. Sony do too now. It's a low fee. People are happy to waste $5 a day on coffee. or to even buy water which should be free. Yet people still do it. I have a feeling some people don't have good
paying jobs. Gold subscription is not a necessity but when you compare it to your other bills the price is minimal compared to your other bills. And we having this discussion? No wonder pc players refer to console players as peasents..... all this fuss offer
such a small fee. And Microsoft is a business. Businesses charge for stuff whether we like it or not. If your circumstances are good people would be fine with paying for it.

 

I have 3 accounts on PSN, all can use PSN+ though I only pay for the main account. Is Microsoft not the same? If someone can't afford the subscription fee than there's a good chance that they couldn't afford a modern console. And a big NO about pc players,
they pay less for games and nothing for services apart from the internet. Pc players get on our case for one reason, their expensive video cards.

 

Totes agree with this comment! I've spoken earlier in this thread about the 'Master Race' mentality and how it pre-empts their sense of entitlement. Having splashed the cash for expensive cases and components, they then feel the free market *owes* them something.
A dedicated PC gaming mag (which I named earlier and read fervently despite myself) always makes a song and dance about super duper upgrades and ever-diminishing die sizes and then spends the rest of their time spruiking FREEWARE or Steam 'humble bundles'.

By comparison, I'm a 'humble' console gamer who replaces their console every generation but spends THOUSANDS on collector's editions and day one titles! You won't hear me complaining about the cost of doing business whenever it's time to renew my Xbox Gold
membership. Can't speak for the practices of Valve or others, but you get what you pay for - and Microsoft's walled garden is a perennial *safe* harbor for the plebs among us

 

Yet the fee does nothing to counter multiple accounts. In fact Microsoft have made using multiple accounts even easier thanks to Home Gold sharing. To use the fee as a reason to make people use a single account is somewhat strange to be honest. In fact
for it to be effective then Microsoft would have to remove the Gold sharing feature and hike the price massively, in order to force up the prices on the key reselling sites.

Also I'm kind of disappointed that no-one is willing to take a stab at why Microsoft need to charge for a service that Valve can supply for free. Instead it's points comparing Live to a cup of coffee? Or being in a walled garden, the same as that certain other
company gives for free.

Steam Hardware & Software Survey is a link to the latest Steam hardware survey. As I'm sure you can see, most PC gamers on that service aren't using systems that are really worth bragging about. The
PC Master Race idiots shout the loudest but they really don't represent the bulk of people gaming on that platform.

Though to be fair graphics card prices are insane at the moment thanks to cryptocurrency mining, so the expensive video cards comment is kind of accurate at this point in time.

Not really much more I can add to this discussion to be honest when no-one is willing to give a straight answer. Thanks for your time.

 

For the several million people still using Xbox 360 a gold SUB is required for multiplayer and party chat as there's no home sharing on 360. 70 of my friends mostly under 18 haven't made the transition yet. I paid nz$2500 For my first custom pc and it has
an expensive high end i7 CPU and GPU and SSD. And that was with some of the money I saved up.