i have no voice in this conversation because ive never owned an xbox and i typically dont pay games online if i can avoid it. even if i did, i cant imagine paying extra for it. i mean if they do something like paystation plus, where you constantly get discounts and free games for signing up for the paid subscription, instead of just paying for the honor of using their servers, i could see them justifying it again next gen

Zen Toombs:

the hidden eagle:
No because aside from some games like Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed I don't play online and the only reason I even have XBL is so I can buy dlc which they block off from you if you don't have XBL gold.

Dude, you can download DLC with a Silver account. Silver accounts are free.

Thanks for the info I appreciate it.

It's really not worth it at all. The most I ever use it for is the occasional mutiplayer match or coop game every now and again. Oh, and the xbox equivalent to Skype I guess. That said, if my friends that currently own xboxes and xbox live migrate to the nextbox and there's a subscription based online service, I probably will get it anyway.

Captcha: "Cut the mustard." Would that I could Captcha, would that I could...

Apackof12Ninjas:

I guess I am just confused as to why people think "it should be free". The only reason Sony's service is free is because of Xbox live. I guarntee you that if XBL did not exist, Sonys PSN would not be free. Its called being competitive.

Fans of all sides should embrace the competition. Because competition breeds innovation.

Competition is great but there is no reason to go with a lesser service out of concern that the competition will fall. If Xbox live isn't up to par with PSN, then it's a sign that competitively they're doing a really bad job. It's microsoft's responsibility to make itself competitive. As consumers we have no obligation to keep a lesser services going out of guilt.

PS Plus gives you nothing but value. It gives you early game access, beta access to certain games, and also reduced prices. And it also is not necessary in order to play online at all. It's completely optional. It feels like a choice customers can make to enjoy their PS3s. It let's them choose their own level of commitment without feeling like they're completely missing out on everything if they choose not to. But Xbox live... Not only does Microsoft charge you for the mere privilege to use their servers, they STILL have the gall to include advertisements. That's a gigantic slap in the face. It demonstrates that they'll squeeze every last penny out of me, and expect me to simply put up with it without offering anything the competitors aren't already offering. Usually the others simply offer an outright better service. Xbox live does nothing, nothing at all to offer me good value. Especially when compared to nearly every other service out there.

In many ways it looses to the apple store in terms of getting value from your games. THE APPLE STORE.

Caramel Frappe:
It's sure as heck worth it to me. You only have to pay $60 a year to own a golden membership and by my standards, that is fine with me. I can understand why people wouldn't like XBL but really if you're playing a lot of multiplayer and your best friends play games like Borderlands 2 and Black Ops II, then you will certainly want an account for online. I'll even pay for next generation's online.. Though would wait until my friends got it too. Oh and I need online to play Mass Effect 3's multiplayer, god I love that so much being a Collector and all since I unlocked that class.

lol but those games are on the ps3 and they're free online :P

Yopaz:

spartan231490:

Yopaz:

By that train of logic Xbox 360 controllers are worse than Nintendo 64 controllers because they don't work on a Nintendo 64. Steam offers a much better experience for online multiplayer than Xbox Live gold. Sure you can't use Steam's online multiplayer on Xbox 360, but Xbox Live's multiplayer has actually prevented me from playing PC games online.

You know, some of us prefer playing games with a controller, on our couch, with a full tv screen, instead of with a keyboard, at a desk, with a moniter. Steam doesn't let me play that way, and even if it did, it wouldn't let me play with my friends. Therefore, for people like me, gold offers an experience that is infinitely better than steam. Also, your argument about controllers is the worst false analogy I've ever seen, and I watch politics.

It doesn't change the facts at hand though. Steam is more stable. Steam is free. Steam offers a better service.

I have a Wii, a PS3, a Xbox 360, a Wii U and a gaming PC so I have tested the different online systems. Steam offers the best one. It's not my preference. It is what I have experienced through testing them all. There's also nothing with PC that prevents you from playing on the couch with a controller on your TV. With a PC you can choose whatever controller you want. Want a Nintendo 64 controller, an Atari controller, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii or some of the custom PC controllers out there? Pick your favourite, it most likely works.

Yes, I used a false analogy. You did so first and I was merely pointing out your false analogy, but you chose to ignore that. However, I was being completely honest when I said that Xbox Live does in fact prevent me from playing certain PC games online. Say what you will about Sony and Nintendo, they have at least never fucked up PC games online with their systems.

You started out by acting like Xbox had a better service, now you are talking about preference. I think it's clear that when someone who prefers Xbox can't think of a reason why it's objectively better, then it's not better.

Edit: I figured I'd point out your false analogy in case you have forgotten it:

Except online play. You can't play your online 360 multiplayer without it. That's what most of us do with our xbox live, far more than the other stuff

$@#&*#. I never said xbox live was a better service, I never used false analogy. I said that xbox live gold is the only way to play xbox online multiplayer. i said it explicitly. right there. in text. How do people on this site continue to put words in my fucking mouth. I can't make myself more clear. Am I going to have to start putting a 5 page fucking analysis for every 2 sentences I post on this fucking site. "online 360 multiplayer" not online multiplayer. Online multiplayer, for the fucking, xbox 360. How can that be any more fucking clear? People don't buy gold for netflix, they buy gold to play multiplayer online, and put netflix on it cuz they have netflix and why the fuck not. I did not once say anything about steam or other services. Fuck.

TheLycanKing144:

SirDeadly:
I have both a Xbox and a PS3 and can definitely say that XBL is worth it. It looks and runs so much smoother than psn. I would prefer not having to pay for it with the next gen but if I have to I will.

Forgive me as I'm not antagonizing you or anything, your opinion is welcomed. But I don't buy it when people say XBL is "much smoother than PSN", I have to stop you there. I have played games on both before and I didn't notice any difference between playing over XBL and PSN. COD, GTA4, and plenty of others all played the exact same on XBL as they did on PSN.

Which makes sense as most games are P2P, the "smoothness" of an online performance simply is based on your internet connection and the host. It has nothing to do with PSN or XBL.

What I mean by smoothness is the way you can get to your friends list, etc. quickly and easily, it's a much "smoother" layout. It's not so much the connection rather how everything is set out to make your online experience easier. I also experience more disconnections through psn than through xbl.

Honestly, I had some unmatchable fun on some of the games on there for a while. But about 2-3 years ago I found our lord and saviour PC gaming.

So yeah, I don't think I'll be buying the next gen.

I payed for it for 1 year and it was such a huge pain in the ass to unsubscribe I literally had to argue with 3 different people who wouldn't let me unsubscribe I promised myself I would never touch it again. Also my gf bought a ps3 and after having used that for mgs4 and playstation all stars I can honestly say I only miss the controller and being able to sign into multiple profiles on the 360.

The fact that you have to pay $60 to use netflix a service that already costs money on top of that on the 360 is ridiculous.

As someone who has used all three systems extensively the PS3 is the best one the 360 has 2 or 3 advantages but over all the ps3 is just better.

More than likely, I have plenty of fond memories of playing games online with my friends and as long as Microsoft doesn't do something stupid I have no reason not to.

RicoADF:

No I won't pay for live next gen, I don't for my 360. No point wasting money for a service PCs have done since god knows when and even the PS2 pulled off for free. It's a con Microsoft pulls on those that don't know any better

I played allot on the PS2 online service, an although I loved it at the time it was one of thee most inconsistent services I have ever used, at times you just had to walk a way and try and play it another day.

(so you know RicoADF not directly aiming the rest at you just a broader reply to many issue's people seem to have)

I don't understand why people have such a problem with paying for Live, shop around and your paying a massive 8p (12 us cents, 8 euro cents) a day, WOW that's going to break the bank, play for just 2 hours a day an it's an insignificant cost. In exchange there are regular updates to the dashboard, I've never experienced the service going down, an I use it fairly regularly. They have never lost my card details like sony, it's never been down like PSN for what was it 2 weeks? An PC servers aren't perfect either, if a game isn't deemed popular enough I've seen server's shut down after a year, or even worse buggy games remain un-patched as the dev's are hooked into some greater network that will put pressure on them to do so. A lot of pc games don't even incorporate voice chat an you have to look for another program to sort that out for you.

Surrounding people complain about being "bombarded" with adds on Live, yes the 4-6 adds separated on 4 different pages that are catered to your gaming taste and often point out games and demo's I often was not aware of and I'm interested in is a real deal breaker.....

In my view I pay a very very small price (around a 12th of my yearly phone bill but I get the service for the year) and in exchange I know I will be able to play all of my online games online for at least the lifetime of the console, the service is a reliable connection and always up, games are almost always patched, I have all the interfaces I could want for gaming (messaging, private chat, partys & party chat), comparison features to my friends, my details are looked after, a huge array of indie games & demo's. An it's reliable 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. An I would say I'm a fairly unbiased gamer, I play on PC, Xbox, PS3 an PSP, out of all of them it's the online service I rate the most.

*one note that I am really unhappy about with xbox however that I'm surprised more people are not is most Xbox arcade games require you to be connected to the internet to access the full content you have purchased, total joke as I know 2 years ago this was not the case, changed some when during that period not sure when. (very annoying for me atm as my flat presently can only have one device connected to the internet at any one time!!!!)

EDIT: one more note, nobody who uses the escapist allot can ever complain about Xlive ad's this site at times feel's like a site full of add's, 30 second ad's before videos that are only 60 seconds long?

There's no reason for me to pay for Xbox Live when there are free alternatives that are just as good. I have both an Xbox and a PS3, and I have to say, I'm having as good an experience on PSN as I did on Xbox Live.

the hidden eagle:

Zen Toombs:

the hidden eagle:
No because aside from some games like Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed I don't play online and the only reason I even have XBL is so I can buy dlc which they block off from you if you don't have XBL gold.

Dude, you can download DLC with a Silver account. Silver accounts are free.

Thanks for the info I appreciate it.

No problem. You obviously still need an intertubes connection though.

Yopaz:

spartan231490:

$@#&*#. I never said xbox live was a better service, I never used false analogy. I said that xbox live gold is the only way to play xbox online multiplayer. i said it explicitly. right there. in text. How do people on this site continue to put words in my fucking mouth. I can't make myself more clear. Am I going to have to start putting a 5 page fucking analysis for every 2 sentences I post on this fucking site. "online 360 multiplayer" not online multiplayer. Online multiplayer, for the fucking, xbox 360. How can that be any more fucking clear? People don't buy gold for netflix, they buy gold to play multiplayer online, and put netflix on it cuz they have netflix and why the fuck not. I did not once say anything about steam or other services. Fuck.

This is your reply to my post about how Xbox Live was charging you for a service others give us for free.

Except online play. You can't play your online 360 multiplayer without it. That's what most of us do with our xbox live, far more than the other stuff

Let me explain why this is isn't a valid point rather than point fingers.
Steam offers online play, just not for Xbox 360. PSN offers online play, just not for the 360. Nintendo offers online play just not for the 360.

It doesn't offer anything the others don't except for which system it works on. Your first post was wrong. Your second post was off topic defending consoles. You're jumping around so much that I can't tell what the next post will say, but I am guessing you're going to explain to me why Hitler's choice to invade Poland put him in a dangerous position with Russia who were in liege with aliens. Whatever you see fit to discuss, please don't bother. I don't like discussing things with someone who can't stick to the topic so consider yourself the winner if that makes you feel any better. Consider yourself right. Consider me a coward.

Right there, in the post you have now read 3 times, it says "360 online play." If you have a 360, and you want to get the most out of your games and play multiplayer, gold is worth it. If all your friends play xbox live, no other live service will be as fun. Nothing I have said has been off-topic, you have simply chosen to misinterpret everything I've said to fit your agenda. Why I am surprised by this occurring on this site, I truly don't know. Have a good day, and I'll Pray For You.

SmashLovesTitanQuest:

I've completed The Witcher 2 3 times in 2 different years. Fable roughly 10 times since it came out for the original Xbox. Mass Effect 2 twice, once in 2011 or so and once recently. Just to name a few.

These last few weeks I've been playing AoE3 single player, a game released in 2005, Dungeon Keeper 2, a game released back in 1997, Shogun 2, released in 2010 (I think?) and Oblivion, released in 2006.

Does that answer your question? Not all of us throw games into a corner never to play them again once we've beaten them or reached the max level.

Assuming you got all those games at time of release, you are talking about 16 years worth of games. I'm willing to bet that you have bought/rented/borrowed a lot more than the seven you have mentioned directly here. How many of those games do you still play? I've been gaming since the days of the NES, but the oldest game that I still have is probably Red Alert or Tomb Raider 2. Not sure about TR2, but I know that RA is unplayable, unless you are willing to get DOS emulators.

The games released on PS+ are generally older games. If you were a fan of the series, then there's a good chance that you would have bought it at or near launch. This is a useful service for those that wouldn't have bought or played the games at all. InFamous 1 was fun, but I didn't feel that 2 was worth the money. Now that I've played it, I can see it was a great game and I'm sorry I overlooked it.

TL;DR If you are playing games that have lots of replayability, then it's better to buy it. If it's a game you would otherwise have played, or are only going to play it once, then this is a great service.

It was worth it when my friends actually played games on it ever. Now I use it for Battlefield 3 every few months, but I use my PS3 for everything instead. Unless there is a drop in price of the service or a massive overhaul of it's services I won't be paying for it.

People supporting XBL are worse than people supporting always online DRM and on disk DLC combined.
You are paying to be able to use the internet you already payed for. You're paying to be able to view ads. You're paying from something that is free on the PS3 and the WiiU. I don't like to use this word, but XBL is a cancer that needs to be dealt with.

Jedi-Hunter4:
EDIT: one more note, nobody who uses the escapist allot can ever complain about Xlive ad's this site at times feel's like a site full of add's, 30 second ad's before videos that are only 60 seconds long?

The Escapist is a free service and needs a way to earn money and pay for the people working and servers. If you buy the premium membership, there are no ads.

However, you pay for XBL gold and you still have to view those ads.

Yes I'll be getting it, XBL gold is very cheap (less than 10p a day if you get a year's sub) and I've had a lot of fun with it, and I actually appreciate getting ads because without them I wouldn't have noticed the sale last week and gotten Max Payne 3 for £4. The thing about ads is that you can just ignore them if you don't like them, and get useful information from your content providers if you don't mind them - and hey, if you're a whiner, they give you something to masturba-whine about, so you should be thankful.

Jedi-Hunter4:
*snip*

First I'd like to say, if your happy with x-box live then good. I'm only saying how I feel about it, others have different views on what they expect. However just to address a few points.

Jedi-Hunter4:
I don't understand why people have such a problem with paying for Live, shop around and your paying a massive 8p (12 us cents, 8 euro cents) a day, WOW that's going to break the bank, play for just 2 hours a day an it's an insignificant cost. In exchange there are regular updates to the dashboard, I've never experienced the service going down, an I use it fairly regularly.

It's the principle of the matter, on PC and PS3 you can play all your games for free (and most don't have servers that can go down, thats a relatively new thing one that even xbox suffers (HALO 2). Even if a game does lose the net play on PC you can work around it.

Jedi-Hunter4:
A lot of pc games don't even incorporate voice chat an you have to look for another program to sort that out for you.

The thing is with a PC that is an option, and multiple ones too. I like having the consistancy with using teamspeak with whatever I do.

Jedi-Hunter4:
An I would say I'm a fairly unbiased gamer, I play on PC, Xbox, PS3 an PSP, out of all of them it's the online service I rate the most.

I have them all (2 computers, PS3, 360, PSP, PSVITA)and as I said before, to me their all the same, I have yet to see anything special about the live service. That's not a bad thing, its a good service like PSN etc, but the price isn't worth it. If they had it so you could use it for free with adds or pay to be add free I'd be fine with that, but paying to play games online in this day and age is a rip off to me, weather it's $1 or $100, no amount is worth it.