Should online multiplayer be free for consoles?

It cost money for the system so they need to fund it someway.

Actually I'll be in the minority but I'll say no. I definitely don't think it should be as expensive as it is, but I do think paying is good because it does give the companies money and might help servers run better. MS made tons off of XBL and now they're supposedly throwing in 300,000 servers.

you get a month of service for about the cost of going to the movie theatre.. if thats too much for you to handle, then maybe you should find a new hobby

Core online multiplayer should be free on video game consoles because it works with computers.

you get a month of service for about the cost of going to the movie theatre.. if thats too much for you to handle, then maybe you should find a new hobby

Flubbbs

That's completely beyond the point. 

It cost money for the system so they need to fund it someway.

wiouds

I've lobbed SONY together with MS for this next-gen as in---trash. These arrogant assholes wanna charge for something that's
been free forever on PC AND for much longer? Yeah, I don't think so. I'm not a fool.

It was nice while it lasted SONY, but you've messed up. Why do you think I never once ever looked at anything MS has done? 

This is another instance of where gamers did themselves more harm than good. When MS first introduced the XBox and told people that it would include a subscription servie, they should have not bought them. The problem is, console gamers were in such a rush to play online, they went out and showed that they were willing to pay to play by buying them and paying for said subscription. If gamers had let the consoles sit on the shelf and told MS that they were not going to pay to play online, it might have been different.

Sony, after two generations of consoles with internet connectivity saw what they were missing, finally, they decided to join the party MS forged.

MS tried that with PC gamers with the Games For Windows Live service which was the same thing as XBox live except for PC gamers. It failed horribly due to the fact that PC gamers already had different options for finding MP games as well as not ever having to pay to use said services, ever and still don't. 

Of course it should be free. It has always been free on PC. People should never have accepted to pay for the first Xbox Live in the first place.

As a matter of fact, there has always been more options and functionality on the free PC online multiplayer than on Xbox Live. I've always said it: since day 1, Xbox Live offers you to pay to have an inferior experience than its competition.

Well, for me it's no big deal as I already have plus and have gotten some pretty good games from it, and since it'll still be supported on PS3, Vita, and now PS4, the fee really isn't as bad as it is for Live, which so far has done nothing but populated the main interface with advertisements and just now are giving Fable 3 for free.

I don't think it SHOULD be free. This is a service that MS and Sony offer, and it comes at a cost to them. I don't see how it is "abuse" to have the user pay a fee. Especially when it comes out to $5 a month or less.

For those who keep mentioning the PC...what can I say, go play on it!

With an $800 budget you can (maybe) get a decent gaming PC. At $50/year for PS+, I can pay for 8 years of PS+ after spending $400 on a PS4. I don't think it's too much to ask, especially in Sony's case when they give you so much in return for your membership.

Even Xbox Live at $60 a year is not bad. You'd get 5 years of Live if you pay $500 for the X1.

you get a month of service for about the cost of going to the movie theatre.. if thats too much for you to handle, then maybe you should find a new hobby

Flubbbs

[QUOTE="Flubbbs"]

you get a month of service for about the cost of going to the movie theatre.. if thats too much for you to handle, then maybe you should find a new hobby

famicommander

Why should they give you the on-line service for free?

Yes.

[QUOTE="famicommander"][QUOTE="Flubbbs"]

you get a month of service for about the cost of going to the movie theatre.. if thats too much for you to handle, then maybe you should find a new hobby

wiouds

Why should they give you the on-line service for free?

Because you pay your ISP to go online? Yeah that's what your ISP is for, to provide you with an internet connection, this might come as a shock to you but XBOne and PS4 aren't "giving" you anything, the servers are owned and managed by the game companies from whom you buy the game, not by $ony and Micro$oft. That's why on PC multiplayer is 100% free, because the duopoly of Micro$oft and $ony could not find a way to milk PC gamers of their money as well (I think Micro$oft did try something similar on Windows, it failed horribly). These coorporations make people pay for something that actually costs them nothing, and people defend them for it.

Perhaps if $ony and Micro$oft at least made a seperate free multiplayer, and a premiuim subcription based membership to access extra features, then players can still play multiplayer for free which is their right, or they can pay for some extra features like trophies and friends lists if they choose to, that would be a start.

yes, especially if its p2p. dedicated servers...then okay i can understand

Should it? Yes. Will it? No.

You see, now that Microsoft have gotten away with charging for mulitplayer for the last decade or so, and millions of people have happily paid for it, there is zero incentive to offer it for free anymore. This is precisely why Sony are making having a PS+ subscription mandatory for playing multiplayer on PS4. I can't blame the console manufacturers; they only carried on with it because it was such a resounding success. If people actually cared about it being free, they wouldn't have paid for it in the first place.

This is another instance of where gamers did themselves more harm than good. When MS first introduced the XBox and told people that it would include a subscription servie, they should have not bought them. The problem is, console gamers were in such a rush to play online, they went out and showed that they were willing to pay to play by buying them and paying for said subscription. If gamers had let the consoles sit on the shelf and told MS that they were not going to pay to play online, it might have been different.

Sony, after two generations of consoles with internet connectivity saw what they were missing, finally, they decided to join the party MS forged.

MS tried that with PC gamers with the Games For Windows Live service which was the same thing as XBox live except for PC gamers. It failed horribly due to the fact that PC gamers already had different options for finding MP games as well as not ever having to pay to use said services, ever and still don't. 

WhiteKnight77

This is exactly what I mean. :) Agree 100%.