(After 2.40 FW) Is XBL $50 a year Better than PSN?

[QUOTE="SambaLele"][QUOTE="bungie93"]

[QUOTE="carlisledavid79"]Simple answer. Xbox live should have been free ages ago. Fignewton50

Agreed.

agreed. and this should be common sense in SW. can't see why would anyone defend having to pay for something that has always been free.

Of course everyone would like things to be free, but sometimes the cost justifies the product. Xbox Live hasn't "always been free", it never has. There are products that offer similar features for free, but the comprehensive package that Xbox Live Gold has never been done by a single product before.

From the question in the topic title and the options available on the poll, the point of the thread is: after the 2.4 firmware update, will XBL's $50 a year still be justified? Will it still be better than PSN?

Online play, in general (not in particular games), was never paid until XBL came out. It has always been arguable which service was better, and the "feature" that even made the PSN a contestant against Live was the free online play. There would be no point arguing which was better if Live was free.

But the content available doesn't justify the fee by itself. That's why they kept the online play exclusive to Gold subscribers.

With the PSN more and more approaching Live's offerings without charging a fee (Qore for example, offers more demos, videos, exclusive info, etc, but the PSN itself still releases the usual demos, trailers, videos, etc and online play, all for free. Qore only offers more, trying to be somewhat of a Gold Live, and that's why i don't think it will be that successful, even though it only charges half the Gold fee) the XBL Gold price becomes more and more unjustified.

[QUOTE="SambaLele"]

The most important feature to have in an online service for consoles still is the online multiplayer. You can bet that if the XBL Silver offered online multiplayer, the vast majority of users would go with that plan, since there's the demos, some of the content and there would be the online gameplay. Then, there would be no arguing which service would be better, XBL Silver would really be the way to go.

Yet, MS chose to keep the online multiplayer (must i add, with no dedicated servers, only the low cost P2P play) one of the reasons to bring players to give them the $50 a year fee. Content is good, but it will only draw your attention for 15% of the time you have with a game, while the rest is with single-player and multiplayer (the vast majority of the time spent being in this last one).

ReverseCycology

So people still believe that all PS3 games have dedicated servers, and all 360 games are only P2P? Because if the answer is yes, then it's not even worth having a nice debate.

The TC made no mentions about online, so I didn't talk about online, he just went straight to the $50 bucks a year agrument but failed to even mention about Qore, a $25 annual fee. I mean with XBL Gold you have all these features and content available. While PSN still lack features and content, and these exclusive content will only be found in Qore.

Would you rather pay for exclusive content but free online, or free exclusive content but pay to play online? Double edged sword.

Also part of my agrument was that these PS3 games might not even have these features, while it's guaranteed that every 360 game will have these features.

I never said that all games on the PS3 had dedicated servers. they don't even have to, it's free. the one that should offer it is Live, that's the paid service. That's what i said, you're taking my words for a sense that pleases you.

Also, there is no double edged sword there. paying for only for the exclusive content could even have some sense, but paying for the main element of having an internet conection in a machine that plays games is a no brainer. or you really think there would be so many Gold subscribers if the online play was free on XBL?

[QUOTE="SambaLele"]

The most important feature to have in an online service for consoles still is the online multiplayer. You can bet that if the XBL Silver offered online multiplayer, the vast majority of users would go with that plan, since there's the demos, some of the content and there would be the online gameplay. Then, there would be no arguing which service would be better, XBL Silver would really be the way to go.

Yet, MS chose to keep the online multiplayer (must i add, with no dedicated servers, only the low cost P2P play) one of the reasons to bring players to give them the $50 a year fee. Content is good, but it will only draw your attention for 15% of the time you have with a game, while the rest is with single-player and multiplayer (the vast majority of the time spent being in this last one).

ReverseCycology

So people still believe that all PS3 games have dedicated servers, and all 360 games are only P2P? Because if the answer is yes, then it's not even worth having a nice debate.

The TC made no mentions about online, so I didn't talk about online, he just went straight to the $50 bucks a year agrument but failed to even mention about Qore, a $25 annual fee. I mean with XBL Gold you have all these features and content available. While PSN still lack features and content, and these exclusive content will only be found in Qore.

Would you rather pay for exclusive content but free online, or free exclusive content but pay to play online? Double edged sword.

Also part of my agrument was that these PS3 games might not even have these features, while it's guaranteed that every 360 game will have these features.

In a way you are right but I still disagree.

I don't know what is on XBL as far as movies and tv downloads and music downloads etc but one thing I can tell you is that I would never ever pay for content like that. I prefer to download torrents for my fave shows on TV etc (then copy it to the PS3). I don't see the point wasting money paying for content like that.

Xbox Arcade games is a different thing altogether though. That's a good service.

There are still more features in XBL but PSN has given us the core features that make the biggest difference. Being able to msg people from ingame and have a trophy system is fantastic.

I wouldn't want to pay for XBL media content and would not call that a feature.

I do like the fact that in XBL you can leave voice messages and use voice such that you can be in a different game to your friend and still talk to each other. That is a great feature of XBL that I'd like to see on PSN/XMB.