"

Instead of imporving Gold they just sort of pressed down on Silver.  See what I mean?
"

there's special boards for your type. 

Choose wisely:
for retards
for smart people

"nailerr said:

"

Instead of imporving Gold they just sort of pressed down on Silver.  See what I mean?
"

Indeed!  Yes, they should focus more on upgrading the gold accounts, but for now, we must enjoy what we have.  I understand your stance, really I do, it's just, for me, I derive so much enjoyment out of my service, that all of it's flaws are frivolous to me. Ya know? Oh, and sorry to hear about the death of your 360 :(
"

I have to say I wouldn't want Microsoft to remove the ads. I like the ads. They're informative. It's not like I'm thinking about something besides videogames when I'm looking at my 360 dashboard.

But yeah, they have to do something, the current model of features and content delivery feels like buzzards swarming around you nipping at your wallet, especially for someone like me used to the PC.

"there's special boards for your type. 

Choose wisely:
for retards
for smart people"

"I have to say I wouldn't want Microsoft to remove the ads. I like the ads. They're informative. It's not like I'm thinking about something besides videogames when I'm looking at my 360 dashboard.

"SmugDarkLoser said:

"there's special boards for your type. 

Choose wisely:
for retards
for smart people"

Did not like the comment, but I have much respect for your mini bio

"100% biased gamer."

That's fair warning in my opinion, which sucks because it would make arguing with you less fun =)
"

"SpaceInsomniac said:

"When 360 makes up over half the current gen gaming market, you'd have to be out of your mind as a 3rd party developer to not develop your game for PS3 and 360.  I really doubt MS is having to pay billions to secure exclusives.  The exceptions to this are actual 3rd party exclusives--such as Rockstar's forthcoming GTA downloadable content--and likely Final Fantasy XIII.  I'm guessing Square told MS they would port the game after finishing the US PS3 version, and MS paid them to hold the US PS3 version back for a day and date simultaneous release with the 360 version.

Either way, Sony did the exact same thing--spent billions securing exclusivity--only with Blu Ray movies instead of games.  Nothing to blame either company for, as both were smart moves for Sony and MS to make.
"

Lol, really? GTA IV, for one, how many million? FF13 was obviously a cash in, since they don't even know how they are going to do it yet, its all very sudden/recent, last minute basically. So it's obvious MS is paying, not only to secure titles on their platform as well, but for 'exclusive DLC'. And how is Sony spending that much securing BD exclusives? That makes no sense whatever, if HD DVD is not even existent anymore how would they be PAYING for exclusives? And even when HD DVD WAS alive, Sony wasn't paying for exclusives.
"

yea, but i think it's sort of ironic.  I don't just have one console.
I also owned a gameboy, a gameboy advanced, and a portable sega system (don't even know what it was). 

typically people who claim to be unbiased are more biased.  I just say as I see, no curving to make someone feel better. "

I have to agree that this is a lame move on Microsoft's part.  I'm not an XBL subscriber and got slammed with the rejection message when I tried to download the Too Human demo.  It's not the money for XBL—$50 is nothing, but I feel like at this point in time, I'm getting way less nothing for my $50 than I deserve.  Incidentally, I had a free 48-hour trial of XBL to use this past weekend, and I did—and out of three games I tried, two didn't have anyone else online playing (that XBL could find) and the other one only had people online sporadically.  Sometimes I couldn't find a game at all!

So what am I paying for?  Not for advertisements, that's for sure.  The same principle now applies to Too Human—I don't intend to give the game a second chance, although I might later on if I hear very good things about it.... and so far I haven't.

I probably will actually subscribe to XBL soon enough due to Xbox Live Primetime, but I'll be starting off with one of the shorter-term subscriptions.  Dropping $50 into a service that doesn't actually appear to provide service is foolhardy.

  Dropping $50 into a service that doesn't actually appear to provide service is foolhardy.
"

I have many friends on Live, half of which are life long meatspace associates.  And since I live outside the UK now it was good to chat to them while killing people who liked our scathing yet witty demeanour.  And I thought to myself, of my friends and cohorts...

FUCK 'EM.  FUCK THE LOT OF THEM.  They'd do the same to me!




Just sayin.  Aint all about being anti social.

Just sayin.  Aint all about being anti social.
"

S'ok, been a long day.  Felt the need to join in again.  Nothing was levelled at your post.

And the long day starts again at 5am, which is upsettingly close.

G'night Bombers.

Perhaps they exclude silver members from the demos for the first week to slow down the bandwidth feeding frenzy that happens for demos for new, highly sought titles?

I don't have any idea what Live's delivery system for specific articles of content is like, but I suppose it could be possible that they segment portions of the service off like that to prevent one popular demo from crashing the rest of the service.

Just a possibility.

Not to sound like a fanboy, but XBL is still better than PSN. Why elsewould they make home? the goodness of their hearts? No they wanted to make something better than XBL because the regular PSN cannot compete yet. XBL really is better service. Anyway, XBL isn't expensive. Microsoft cares little about me and even littler about you and your rant. They will not fix the demo thing nor make XBL Gold and Silver closer to equal. The more crappy silver is, the more people will want to upgrade to gold.

"DXSSI said:

  Dropping $50 into a service that doesn't actually appear to provide service is foolhardy.
"

For you perhaps, but for me, I never have trouble finding people on line, furthermore, a vast array of individuals to game with in my union and those on my friends list.  The Live experience is a social medium.  Get out there and make friends so you have someone to game with.   If your anti-social the live experience is not for you.  Therefore, logically, a subscription would not be a good investment for those individuals.
"

"LightYagami245 said:

"nailerr said:

"Anyone who thinks a comparison of what is readily available in the same market space is flame bait is looking too hard.

The plain point is that I am unhappy with Xbox Live's current model, and I have every right to be because I have been there since the start.  Paying.  When there is a case for case example of a service working differently, what is wrong with making it an example?  Some of us do not feel a need to fight over the validity of consumer electronics.  We just like them.

I'd prefer it if people came to argue with me that the fee is valid and tell me why they think so, not kick off on some bender because they can not accept I have no fucking scret agenda.  I really hoped we might avoid that given it being a new forum.

Examples are sometimes useful.  So I'll just thank those who understood that, and replied in kind.
"

I see what you meant now. My mistake. I thought you were just saying that it's not good and saying that others should get a PS3 to use PSN.
"

No problem then.  Although I think my rant/question really has triggered the usual rukkus over things.  For that I appologise, just wish it was easier to have a forum thread stay on topic.  Perhaps my next one will be about Pie ;)
"

By that logic, living in a shack is better than living in a mansion.

"Not to sound like a fanboy, but XBL is still better than PSN. Why elsewould they make home? the goodness of their hearts? No they wanted to make something better than XBL because the regular PSN cannot compete yet. XBL really is better service. Anyway, XBL isn't expensive. Microsoft cares little about me and even littler about you and your rant. They will not fix the demo thing nor make XBL Gold and Silver closer to equal. The more crappy silver is, the more people will want to upgrade to gold."

I'm not anti-social.  I have never had an Xbox Live account, so I don't have any XBL friends at the moment... nor do I care to make any at this time, given my intermittent subscription status.  It's not fair to others if I have them add me as a friend and then I'm never around.

Here's the thing—Xbox Live, from what I've been told again and again—is supposed to be this amazing experience that's easy to get into and use, and is wildly popular because of it.  Yet I couldn't find people (at random) to play with.  Literally none.  Where, pray tell, am I supposed to make friends in the first place if no one is playing online?  Isn't that how you would go about it—meet people online in a game, and make friends with them to play again some other time, steadily amassing a list of fellow gamers?

I could always go onto Internet sites, like Giant Bomb, and make friends there—but that's Nintendo's bag, or so I've been told.  If this is what you're recommending to me, then I know a multitude of Xbox 360 fanboys who've got some 'splainin to do.  And I'll reiterate—I'm not anti-social, and if this is the best Microsoft can muster, I'm okay with that, but I will continue to seriously question why I should pay $50 a year for XBL when the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection (and PSN, for that matter) is free.
"

It still blows my mind how people can still complain about the cost of Xbox Live.  It's like $4 a month. 

" Yet I couldn't find people (at random) to play with.  Literally none.  Where, pray tell, am I supposed to make friends in the first place if no one is playing online?  Isn't that how you would go about it—meet people online in a game, and make friends with them to play again some other time, steadily amassing a list of fellow gamers?

I tried three games.  Mr. Driller Online (a fairly recent release, I find it very hard to believe that no one is playing it), Lumines Live (which is way old, so it's the only one I wouldn't be too surprised to find out had no actual competition out there) and Puzzle Quest (which just released an expansion pack, so people MUST be playing.)

Puzzle Quest is the one that I actually found people on, but even then results were poor.  Trying both the regular mode and the ranked mode, I never found any more than one person to play with in a given play session, and at some times of the day there were none at all.  After each match the game didn't offer me the option to battle the same player again (don't know if this is normal or not, I've never seen it any other way) and it would never be able to find another person, at least until I tried again hours later.  Even though PQ offered the best results, I'd still estimate I only had about a 33% success ratio in finding opponents.

Granted, they're all XBLA games, but I don't see why that should matter.  I would think they'd be more sustainable—not less—what with the ability to jump in and play without having to change discs.

Mr Driller Online was, as Giant Bomb has said before, broken at launch.  The online component was broken.  Of Mr Driller Online.  Yeah.

And Lumines Live, I can tell you as a massive Lumines fan has game destroying lag.  I have no idea how but every game can be wrecked by something as simple as someone else on the same LAN accessing youtube.  Never got fixed.

Fact is you only find people playing games that people are playing.  This was a selection of broken and niche games, competition will be slim.

"It still blows my mind how people can still complain about the cost of Xbox Live.  It's like $4 a month. 
"

"shadowjak said:

"Not to sound like a fanboy, but XBL is still better than PSN. Why elsewould they make home? the goodness of their hearts? No they wanted to make something better than XBL because the regular PSN cannot compete yet. XBL really is better service. Anyway, XBL isn't expensive. Microsoft cares little about me and even littler about you and your rant. They will not fix the demo thing nor make XBL Gold and Silver closer to equal. The more crappy silver is, the more people will want to upgrade to gold."

That last bit just aint true.  You rarely feel like paying for something when the tester is displeasing.  The idea is to please consumers, so they spend money.  Something the music industry has long forgotten.
"

I'm not going to pretend I am some market analyst but I'm fairly sure giving people a bad experience is not the most successful method of convincing people your paid service is going to be any better.

"I'm not going to pretend I am some market analyst but I'm fairly sure giving people a bad experience is not the most successful method of convincing people your paid service is going to be any better.
"

It was a reply to Shadowjak, I think his idea of promoting something by making it bad is a few marbles short of insane :P

 is a few marbles short of insane :P
"

"I'm not going to pretend I am some market analyst but I'm fairly sure giving people a bad experience is not the most successful method of convincing people your paid service is going to be any better.
"

"nailerr said:

"I'm not going to pretend I am some market analyst but I'm fairly sure giving people a bad experience is not the most successful method of convincing people your paid service is going to be any better.
"

No, see, that's pretty much the idea behind it.  "Here's a taste of what the paid service is like.  Oh, you don't like that you can't play online? Well, that's easy to fix! Just sign up right now for $50/year, and for no additional charge, you get online play! Isn't that fantastic?"
"

Well, yeah, I wasn't trying to say you were WRONG, I was just saying that they're not trying to give a BAD experience.  But they deliberately cripple it to make you want to buy the full version.

What can i say, you get what you pay for. Free loaders have to wait in line.

"What can i say, you get what you pay for. Free loaders have to wait in line."

"Mr Driller Online was, as Giant Bomb has said before, broken at launch.  The online component was broken.  Of Mr Driller Online.  Yeah.

And Lumines Live, I can tell you as a massive Lumines fan has game destroying lag.  I have no idea how but every game can be wrecked by something as simple as someone else on the same LAN accessing youtube.  Never got fixed.

Fact is you only find people playing games that people are playing.  This was a selection of broken and niche games, competition will be slim.
"

"nailerr said:

"Mr Driller Online was, as Giant Bomb has said before, broken at launch.  The online component was broken.  Of Mr Driller Online.  Yeah.

And Lumines Live, I can tell you as a massive Lumines fan has game destroying lag.  I have no idea how but every game can be wrecked by something as simple as someone else on the same LAN accessing youtube.  Never got fixed.

Fact is you only find people playing games that people are playing.  This was a selection of broken and niche games, competition will be slim.
"

I can respect that—on a free-online platform like the Wii.  But if I'm expected to pay for access, in return I expect better than this.
"

Live should be free anyway, and until it is I'll stay silver. Having to wait a week for demos is really stupid though.