starfurydysan

At last a News Writer who uses Editorial" in the title instead of writing an Op-Ed piece disguised as news which I felt Patrick did a lot of the time. Love it Austin!

The second to last paragraph is what I wish most sites would have said instead of some sites doing that "Death of The Gamer" essays. Both "sides" are crappy in this whole situation.

I'd like to hear from the perspective of game devs on the subject because the story was that having Kinect with every Xbox One made it more likely for game devs to use it or develop. Is it a failure of the game devs not being creative, the market not wanting/getting it, or what?

BlowFish I like that.

Press-developer relationship stuff aside, Fish was too thin skinned given his track record in the industry.

Still Beers does express a sentiment about indie game devs like BlowFish that I agree with - they act too good for their position and quite snobbish. "You’re successful game designers, you’re indie game designers--hurrah, good for you, you fucking hipsters". Hipsters is right. There is such a lack of humility and humbleness compared to the friendly indie game devs I have met, that I think BlowFish don't deserve to be the defacto spokespeople of indie devs only because they are such outspoken elitist auteurs.

@Jamesesdad: Again agree to disagree, sir. You definitely are not a non-fanboy, you already coloured yourself as biased by the $ in MS, and .

I have all the systems too (two 360s, PS3, Wii, DS, 3DS, PSP, PC, Mac, etc), and choose to pay for the best services for my dollar, so I don't feel fleeced at all. I get the most out of my money, PS+ is just not worth MY money, you can do what you like with yours I don't care. I do like Steam but the argument was for comparing paid premium online services on game consoles.

I just expressed my opinion that GB does not have a dissenting opinion to Patrick's current tirade against XBL (ads, indie games, & fees) and his push for PS+ as a equivalent service worth comparing. I don't think it is after my 3 months of PS+ experience (that was gifted to me) and my +7 years with XBL the services don't compare, and it just lead to podcasts & articles with no debate on the subject. There are a lot of people like me are willing to pay for a good secure reliable service like XBL (remember the PSN downtime and stolen credit cards, I do and the hassle it caused me) and feel that it is a valuable, not because there is no alternative but because it is worth the money, so there must be a counter point to his. I would have liked a discussion on it.

And yes it is worth paying for well maintained publicly owned private courts at my local municipal community centre which don't have any of those annoying things you describe.

You will be the last person I'll reply to in this post as this is just sad to see that only Sony & Steam fanboys want to reply back spouting platform propaganda. At least I can be proud that the fools who did reply created accounts (1 post really, lol) just to reply back to little old me. Cool story bro.

@Shingro: I meant we will have to agree to disagree, and was trying to end the conversation there.

Now XBL Gold does pay for server maintenance, which you are fooling your self if you think matchmaking servers or in some cases the game servers themselves are not maintained by MS at some point. As for the tennis analogy, the city that I live has the athletic centres that you pay a fee to use the courts which are maintained by the city, nothing towards road or some gang (knew if I used that analogy it would be taken by some to mean country club...). As for the free games $300 is the MSRP, you know they have such a markup to maintain a profit, it costs them next to nothing if the game was extremely old to make it "free". My main point is you don't OWN them when you stop the service, it just gives the illusion that you own the free games when in fact you are continuously renting them. And quite mature for ending your arguments with =P, clearly a game changer right there. No confirmation bias as I would pay for a good PS+ service and would love to see competition which lead to cheaper and better services in the market, but I put the blame on Sony for not responding to the preexisting XBL paid service with a feature set worth my money.

Again we will have to agree to disagree.

@umbaglo: Well we have to disagree, paying for ONLINE multiplayer is core to a ONLINE service and XBL is worth my money and PS+ is not even worth talking about until Sony cleans it up to been even worth a cent.

@umbaglo: Yeah the Vita, NOT the main console the PS3, that sounds very logical.

I don't see the XBL subscription fee as a "tax". I see it as paying for the upkeep for servers that provide me with an online service that is reliable, secure, and consistent through out all the games I play, and help to connect with the people I want to. I pay for the servers to play the game in the same way I pay for renting out the tennis court at my community centre or gym. I have the tennis balls and rackets (the software) to play but I want to know that the court I play is good & maintained (the server). You might see ONLINE multiplayer as core but I see it as an EXTRA because you could play that game OFFLINE multiplayer but to play with others ONLINE requires a server, and that server to stay up need to be maintained by a human. If it is free they have no financial obligation to have good upkeep, and at some point the someone has to be paid to maintain it or they get rid of it (see EA game servers). If I pay for it to be up I know they have an obligation that the service has to be up.

Also the discounts and free games is a farce, you don't own those game once you stop paying, and the discounts on games are not going to last as a feature in the long run given Sony's financial situation.

Until Sony brings PSN/PS+ up to parity, quality, & consistency to services provided by XBL, they cannot be really compared.

Well I do look at the games tab, it's like looking at a store flyer, if you don't look for what's on sale, new or whatever you will never know. I find that I discover games more through word of mouth than ads, social media, and gaming sites than through ads, maybe MS sees it that way. I disagree that the dashboard is covered in ads solely for other stuff than gaming. It's covered in ads for stuff relevant to the tab it is view with a random corner ad for something else.

What I am getting from recent talk on the Bombcast and stories like this is that@patrickklepek is really negative on XBox Live. I wish there was a counter-point on the site to as I find XBL worth the money compared to PSN+. All the complaints about the new minor features like IE 10 aside, PSN+ still has core features that are not matched to XBL: inter-game communication, XBL parties, standardized matchmaking (Trueskill), downloadable profile, and cloud saves. Until then PSN+ does not have the right to even be considered a relevant competing service, and XBL can add all the extra non-game stuff it wants as long as those features are kept at a reasonable price.

I can understand it being used as a way to deter buggy games by having a financial hit, and I agree with it. If there is nothing motivating game publishers both Indie and Mainstream to bring working games to market and not broken ones other than the standard complaints in gaming press and forums leading to the usual PR response - it is a simple hit to the bottom line to make them think twice or at least in some cases budget accordingly.

It's nice to say it will come to Steam but a PC audience is more technically savvy, and used to buggy games, due to variety of hardware and software configurations on their end. The same cannot be said of the common console owner who expects it to work, plug & play, no problems, just like any appliance in their house. The Indie scene has to understand that they can't do that on a console platform as the audience is much different and must plan accordingly, so no sympathy from me for not being able to afford to update.

Next time don't send out a broken game or just plan to have fixes.