How much are you willing to pay...

...to play online on a system.

With the news that Live Gold subscriptions may generate as much as $600 billion in revenue for Microsoft. And with our friend Bobby Kotick seeing dollar signs in the potential monetization of online of Activision's Call of Duty franchise.

I thought it would be interesting and pertinent to pose the following questions:

Would you be willing to pay a premium to access the online portion of a single game?

And if "YES" how much would you be willing to pay above the normal retail price of a game? $5? $10? $20? More?

Would you pay a subscription to access the online multiplayer for an individual game?

And more generally, are you willing to pay for online gaming on your system as a whole - at a baseline of let's say US$39.99 pa?

And if "YES" what would be the limit to how much would you be willing to pay before it becomes too much? $60? $80? $100? More?

...to play online on a system.

shinrabanshou

$50 for one year.

I guess I'm willing to pay $50 a year since that's what I do. Not happy about it but I do.

I don't play MMOs for the sole reason of monthly fees so I guess I do have a limit.

I already pay monthly for a single online game, WoW. And i used to pay for WAR and Aion aswell. and PSU on the 360.

I have this very strange belief that when I buy a game for $60, I should have access to all the games features at the time of purchase. This whole idea of paying again to use something I already pay for seems silly to me

I guess I'm willing to pay $50 a year since that's what I do. Not happy about it but I do.

I don't play MMOs for the sole reason of monthly fees so I guess I do have a limit.

Ross_the_Boss6

And setting aside MMOs for a minute, what if it was a "small" premium, say $5 to access online on a major retail title, for example CoD: Black Ops (or insert some other game you're interested in). Would you pay it, or simply go without?

How much im willing? To be perfectly honest, as much as I have to. Gaming wouldn't be the same without multiplayer, well at least on games like Call of Duty or Halo. But you always know PC gaming has your back. Even if Sony and Nintendo both jump on the P2P multiplayer train, I'll simply ditch consoles for PC and only buy single player exclusive games on consoles.

Zero. I already pay for internet, and that's enough. Online gaming fees are a complete ripoff.

I have this very strange belief that when I buy a game for $60, I should have access to all the games features at the time of purchase. This whole idea of paying again to use something I already pay for seems silly to me

BPoole96

That belief of yours is 100% correct. Any other fees besides the retail game price is just shameless milking.

I'm a single player gamer so I wouldn't fork over money for something I hardly if ever use.

$50 is where I draw the line. I'd never pay so I can play the online of just one game.

I'd like $0.

I loved it when Microsoft had the $1 a Month deal.

I mean that was awesome. I got 1 month free and 2 Months for $2.

I pay nothing, and get a superior experience. It's called PC gaming. ;)

$0 from this year on. I might think about paying to acces the online portion if games became $10 cheaper.

I'm stopping my live subscription after 5 years the next time I get that renewal email. PSN has all I need and thus I will have to buy all my online games for ps3. I'm sure in the end this will cost MS moremoney from me than they would have gotten through my live subscription. But its their choice to have a useless fee and now that psn is here there's finaly a free service that's just as good.

Also I've been paying them eur.60 a year through my cc which was about $80-90. It never felt right but I had to to be able to play some of my games like gears and forza.

I am spoiled with free online as a PC gamer. So I am not willing to pay anything to play online. Microsoft found that out the hard way when they actually tried something so stupid as to try and charge us PC gamers for what we already get for free. They tried this with their "Games For Windows" games. As you can see, it failed. We simply didn't buy their games until they got their heads out their...well you know. And now they are no longer trying to bend us over like they do you 360 owners. Unlike 360 gamers, us PC gamers stood up, slapped them in the face and said "no, we will be having none of that here".

Nothing, i dont play online

[QUOTE="BPoole96"]

I have this very strange belief that when I buy a game for $60, I should have access to all the games features at the time of purchase. This whole idea of paying again to use something I already pay for seems silly to me

Master_ShakeXXX

That belief of yours is 100% correct. Any other fees besides the retail game price is just shameless milking.

I have this very strange belief that when I buy a game for $60, I should have access to all the games features at the time of purchase. This whole idea of paying again to use something I already pay for seems silly to me

BPoole96

This.

Zero, I'm utterly spoiled by dedicated servers.

No higher than 50 bucks.

Hate to burst your bubbles, but who then pays for the upkeep of the servers when parts fail? On PC gaming, the servers are kept up and running by donators, as almost all of them are fan run. PS3 the company who makes the game pays for the servers and maintenance (I guess Sony pays for its first party servers), Xbox live, is where your fee goes. People always pay for online play. toxicmog

For the bit about consoles: ..wrong.

XBL and PSN servers are, by and large, listen servers. There are exceptions, but the multiplayer game is running on the players' hardware and bandwidth in the vast majority of cases.. not the developer's or the publisher's.

Another thing to note: most PC publishers also provide official servers for their games free-of-additional-charge.

The online charge on a console can only be legitimately argued as a fee for the online infrastructure..master server (server list) upkeep, matchmaking, stats tracking, achievements system, friends list and whatnot. Again, services like Steam on the PC offer stuff like this completely free-of-charge...

Zero, I'm utterly spoiled by dedicated servers.

Vesica_Prime

You're not spoiled. That's the way it should be for everything

zero, i don't care enough about online gaming to spend a dime on it

£40 a year for Live is the most I'd pay.

If there was an option for XBL Silver-like option where you can still add friends and message them, etc. but just can't play competitive multiplayer, I'd probably just use the for the majority of the time. I might pay a premium amount to play a game online as I only play very few games online a year as it is. Although the whole concept of paying for online or paying for the online portion of a game is a bit stupid.