I don't think it should be free, to be honest. I think the service they give us is well worth the money we have to pay for it. Of course I would like it to be free, but I don't think it should be.
I own both a PS3 and a 360, and I think Micro$oft should really be giving their service out for free. The Playstation Network is rapidly catching up to Xbox live. The only advantages Live has over PSN are the little perks and extra downloads you get, but most of those cost cash.
Some people like to say that Xbox Live has a better connection.... that is a myth. Almost every game on Xbox Live relies on the players themselves to host games, while a lot of the popular PS3 titles such as Warhawk have dedicated servers running 24/7.
because ps3 is almost on par with xbox live and its free plus i dont pay for little extras like voice chat. Look xbox fanboys its a rip off and if you would demand it be free it prob. would become free but as long as you guys keep paying you keep feeding their wallets.
IT'S MICROSOFT...THEY AIN'T GIVING YOU SH#T FOR FREE..SO GET OVER IT.THEY MAKE YOU PAY ALL THAT MONEY FOR A DAMN OS AND IT DON'T EVEN WORK..IT NEEDS UPDATES EVERY SO OFTEN.MICROSOFT WANTS YOUR MONEY....THEY ONLY GOING TO MAKE SOMETHING CONVENIENT IF IT WILL GET THEM MORE MONEY.
Hmmm seems to me there is no reason for them to offer it for free psn is not up to par and never ever will be, the only reason people want it to be free is cause they dont wanna pay money.
P.S: xbox live is not a P2P service its a client side/dedicated server service the developer has every chance to make it dedicated server hosted by them or dedicated servers by the user its not microsofts fault they dont do it. UT3 has a dedicated server option, and there are dedicated server games ran by the developers on xboxlive.
I don't care much really but it would be cool. Its an awesome service and you play like 50 dollars once and then its done with for a whole year not that big of a deal for me really.
Well, what I'm against is having to pay for the actual MP portion of the game. Developers already coded the entire experience on the disk, but MS is just giving you the "right" to play it with a fee. I should be accessing this content, that I paid for, for no additional cost.
But, XBL does offer a lot of other benefits. A great universal platform, servers for information that reduce costs from developers (although it sometimes goes down), community events, and a community that actually speaks once in awhile. Not to mention, XBL always has contests running that give away free things. For example, I won 1000 MS points in the beginning of summer from a contest (essentially a FREE game of choice, or movie, etc.), and 500 points before that for being a long-time subscriber.
To be honest, I don't have any problems with paying. Paying a fairly small amount every year is fine by me. Perhaps when PSN offers just as good of a service, then maybe I'll feel like complaining, but at the moment, I'm fine with it.
I think it's much more likely that Sony will eventually charge for PSN than Microsoft making Xbox LIve free. There is just no reason for MS to make the service free at this point, they're printing money with it year after year.
Because it doesn't work... I can't play a single EA game online along with many others. Plus since I got my xbox back from repair (for the second time) the marketplace won't work. The PSN works fine and costs £40 less.
But then again, live works fine for everyone else.
I hate how every single thing dealing with the 360 costs money. It's kind of ridiculous if you break it down... for example, someone goes out and buys them self the new 60GB Pro bundle for $350 and Halo 3 for $60. Without Live they only get to enjoy about half of the game they paid $60 for. So they go pay $50 for a year of Live just to enjoy Halo 3's multiplayer. Of course they get to enjoy online multiplayer for the other games they buy for the next year, so why isn't the price of 360 game lower because of the price of Live? Both PS3 and 360 owners pay the same price for COD4 but the 360 owners have to have paid for Live to enjoy the full game.
I think XBOX Live as a service should be free, you shouldn't have to pay for multiplayer. They can make plenty of money charging people out the ass for DLC, themes, gamer pics, Video Marketplace, Arcade. It's not really fair to the casual gamer who just plays games and doesn't deal with the Marketplace stuff.
"Second rate service. I could understand paying for them to actually host dedicated servers for all of their games, but that just isn't the case. Besides you gotta pay for everything else, so what gives?"
Second rate? Given that it's by far the most reliable online service for consoles as of today, that makes it first rate. I think you mean PSN is second rate, and for that I am prone to agreeing.
Dedicated servers are absolutely not necessary whatsoever for the vast majority of games. When P2P doesn't work as intended (as was the case with Gears of War), that's an infrastructure issue that can be solved while still using P2P.
"Because they really aren't offering a service, besides connecting you to servers that other customers host. Even for downloads, they shouldn't charge.
But as a PC gamer, I couldn't care less, so life is good."
Technically the service is leaderboards, persistent stats, matchmaking, a lack of cheating, and a unified friend's list/vocal chat client/picture message thing. For a console, that's quite impressive. I'd say it's worth $4.50 a month.
"I think XBL should be free so I can spend my money on more important stuff, like a second console for when my current one rrod's."
Had mine for a year and no problems yet. 1-8004MYXBOX If you actually had one"
I apologize, I really should have explained my situation first. I have had a launch 360 and ever since then I have been enjoying it very much; playing it far more than any other system I own. Unlike it's first 2 years, my 360 has been freezing up very often which has concerned me as my 3 year warranty will run out within a couple months. Instead to trying to post a lame joke to try and lighten my situation that would end up contributing nothing I should have taken my time to construct a well thought out opinion on the subject that adds to the thread like this:
With Sony putting quite a bit of effort into improving their free online experience I think it will only be time until the price for Microsoft's service is no longer justifiable (This is not to say they won't continue charging for it). But, as of now I think Microsoft is still ahead by enough in the online department to pay $5 a month for, especially with the inclusion of 8-person chat along with other features in the new dashboard update.
"As of now it shouldn't be free. But once PSN catches up then it should be free."
Welcome to as of right now.
XBL could at least run on dedicated servers for the games."
As far as I'm concerned only RFoM and WarHawk have dedicated servers. And I've been using LIVE for a while now and I've never experienced Lag."
You must have only played a few hours total on it, because I experience LAG all the time in many games, as do most of the people on Xbox Live. You can either wait it out or go find another room.
It's not that expensive. You have larger troubles if you cannot find 50 dollars for a year of service. I'm not comparing it to anything or deciding based on other companies, I just know it's a great service that I'm willing to pay for.
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