Anyone else agree with me on this idea? Older games' multi should be made F2P

I've been thinking about this for awhile, and I really can't see any cons to this idea. I think that older games' -- or rather less popular games' multiplayer components should be made free to download and play on XBL, irregardless of one's membership status (Silver or Gold). I simply can't stand the fact that there are so many great older games completely devoid of any online activity. Making these games' multiplayer components free to download/play online wouldn't only increase XBL traffic, as there would be a plethora of new free online experiences for gamers to immerse themselves in, it would likely increase sales of these games as well. Sales would likely increase because people who would enjoy the hopefully bustling reinvigorated online communities of somewhat older but classic titles could possibly be given the option to download, at a reduced cost, the single player components of said respective games.

I understand that, at first this idea may sound crazy, but I can't see anything but positive results coming from this. By allowing Silver in addition to Gold members the ability to play older, somewhat outdated but still fun games for free, Microsoft could potentially harbor in a large amount of new Gold members. Gamers who previously never would have played online -- those seemingly content with the single player Xbox experience -- will be sucked into the XBL atmosphere. With the newfound and free ability to play older titles online, these gamers in addition, will likely have the urge after awhile to try out some of the more modern iterations of the games they're playing for free. This would require they upgrade to Gold.

Plus, its not like Microsoft or the developers of these games' themselves are making any profit on these older titles anyway. Making them free to play wouldn't simply be a matter of neutrality, bringing in no revenue just as they were before, it would likely if anything increase revenue for both the game's companies and Microsoft for the reasons listed above. The servers for these game's are still up afterall, right? Why not take advantage of that instead of wasting server space?

I just want to play Red Faction: Guerrilla online dammit! And this seems like a no brainer, smart, and efficient way to bring player bases back to older titles, make some cash, and increase XBL traffic. Microsoft I hope you're reading this! What do you guys think? Do you agree with this notion? What are some older game's that you'd like to see reinvigorated with semi-bustling player bases? Me personally: I want Condemned 2, Perfect Dark Zero, CoD2 and CoD3 back up and running smoothly.

Thanks for reading, send this to Microsoft if you will. I'd love to see a change in this regard, however unlikely it may be.

No. You can't make some features free and jusify charging for others. Paying for XBL Gold makes a great service better, and the price hike last year paved the way for all the new Cable TV features we're getting this year. Besides, its not like the communities would go up much for those older titles even if they were free.

Nah it seems pretty stupid. Why would I want folk to take advantage of me thats is paying a gold membership for them to get some of the service that I get for free and these old games are in the past for a reason that nobody wanted them to come back. If there was ones that folk want ro play again and there is a high demand they will come out on xbla. Also microsoft will take a loss they will have to spend money for staff to upload these games and also waste server space.

1) Why would I want folk to take advantage of me thats is paying a gold membership for them to get some of the service that I get for free

2) these old games are in the past for a reason that nobody wanted them to come back.

3) If there was ones that folk want ro play again and there is a high demand they will come out on xbla.

4) Also microsoft will take a loss they will have to spend money for staff to upload these games and also waste server space.

TrooPlayer

1) Because you can't play the newer titles while they can plus they get all the other "benefits" of paying for Gold on top of that.

2) No, they're in the past because they were released before new titles. :?

3) And pay for the same again, and then have to pay for Gold to play MP? What is this?

4) Microsoft being one of the largest and richest muti-national corporation with cash reserves numbering in the tens of billions will not take a hit maintaining servers. Namely because 99% of XBL game used a P2P network and the few games that are on servers are most certainly not run by Microsoft.

I for one think it's a great idea TC. It's a win-win for all sides involved. I can't think of one reason why Perfect Dark Zero is not F2P.

I think you should let the System Warriors know about this.

No. You can't make some features free and jusify charging for others. Paying for XBL Gold makes a great service better, and the price hike last year paved the way for all the new Cable TV features we're getting this year. Besides, its not like the communities would go up much for those older titles even if they were free.

bonesawisready5

However, I think the communities -- especially on titles that were once popular -- would boost up significantly. Team Fortress 2 saw a 400% increase after going free to play, and it was arguably never as popular as many of these games once were on XBL. Make the release of a certain game's Free2Play multiplayer an event. Advertise it on XBL, and release the multiplayers of these titles through a trickle, not a flood. This will really cement the idea that this is a really cool new feature, and it would also allow new players to try out each game's multiplayer one at a time, rather than having an overwhelming flood of older titles to choose from and not playing any as a result. Players will find their favorites and while many will likely only play for a day or two on one game, they might find a game that would have once been one of their favorite multiplayer titles, and still worth playing today. There are plenty of strategies to increasing player counts once these games have been made F2P.

As for justifying F2P games for Silver members; I don't see the issue. Its not like these games are jam packed full of Gold players paying to play them. If anything, a Gold member not wanting this just seems selfish to me. They're ghost towns as is, the fact is, Gold members who want to play them online can't. A great solution to this is to allow Silver members to be the primary reinvigorators of their communities whereby the Gold members who do want to play can now, and the Silver members who want to play with their new Gold online friends on recent releases will have to upgrade their membership to do so. Like I said, its a win/win for both the players and the corporations involved.

if the games you want free are less popular why do you want to play themnightshadow137

Because they're fun. PC gaming's older titles tend to still thrive online because of a higher player base on the "system", and the ability to pirate (which, while many hermits may not do on recent releases, tons do on older ones). XBL doesn't have these "advantages". Where the majority of players flock, so do others because. Whereupon one decides to go back to his older games, the community is dead because its difficult to find other players who even still own these games, most trade them in once they've determined their multiplayer is dead/dying. If they were F2P, obviously they wouldn't still be thriving as they once were, but they would certainly have modest player bases, of that I'm sure. They're still fun games, hell many aren't even outdated, they just have the disadvantage of being old.

Nah it seems pretty stupid. Why would I want folk to take advantage of me thats is paying a gold membership for them to get some of the service that I get for free and these old games are in the past for a reason that nobody wanted them to come back. If there was ones that folk want ro play again and there is a high demand they will come out on xbla. Also microsoft will take a loss they will have to spend money for staff to upload these games and also waste server space.

TrooPlayer

I think you'd find that if you were to look around, tons of people want them back, its simply difficult and not worth the effort to organize online play sessions (though many do).

No, they won't come out on XBLA. When has Microsoft released a current gen title on XBLA? They have some on Games on Demand for outrageous prices, but that's about it. Besides, charging for these titles kind of defeats the purpose of my argument which was already a win/win for both sides.

Microsoft may take a slight loss in having to upload these to XBL, but when I mean slight, I mean very slight. There's not much work involved in uploading, and they would surely reap more benefits than losses.

[QUOTE="TrooPlayer"]

1) Why would I want folk to take advantage of me thats is paying a gold membership for them to get some of the service that I get for free

2) these old games are in the past for a reason that nobody wanted them to come back.

3) If there was ones that folk want ro play again and there is a high demand they will come out on xbla.

4) Also microsoft will take a loss they will have to spend money for staff to upload these games and also waste server space.

balfe1990

1) Because you can't play the newer titles while they can plus they get all the other "benefits" of paying for Gold on top of that.

2) No, they're in the past because they were released before new titles. :?

3) And pay for the same again, and then have to pay for Gold to play MP? What is this?

4) Microsoft being one of the largest and richest muti-national corporation with cash reserves numbering in the tens of billions will not take a hit maintaining servers. Namely because 99% of XBL game used a P2P network and the few games that are on servers are most certainly not run by Microsoft.

I for one think it's a great idea TC. It's a win-win for all sides involved. I can't think of one reason why Perfect Dark Zero is not F2P.

I think you should let the System Warriors know about this.

Exactly and thank you. I was thinking about posting this to SW but I'm just expecting a lot of "blog its". I think I'll do so anyway.

Exactly and thank you. I was thinking about posting this to SW but I'm just expecting a lot of "blog its". I think I'll do so anyway.

jamejame

No, I think there's a lot of room for discussion.

Just don't expect a warm welcome from cows with regards to a fee to play online.

So you guys are saying that a game that somebody bought 3 4 year ago or how ever long ago for 20 to 30 quid should be made free?

So you guys are saying that a game that somebody bought 3 4 year ago or how ever long ago for 20 to 30 quid should be made free?

TrooPlayer

FREE TO PLAY ONLINE.

Right ok so does that no defeat the purpose of paying for xbox live?

Right ok so does that no defeat the purpose of paying for xbox live?

TrooPlayer

We're talking about games from years ago that no one plays anyway. Why not make them free2play, boost their communities' numbers which in turn might help people decide to go full whack and pay for XBL Gold to play newer releases. Or not. But it doesn't matter either way, no body is losing any money, they're only potentially making money.

Makesperfect sense no matter how you look at it.

[QUOTE="TrooPlayer"]

Right ok so does that no defeat the purpose of paying for xbox live?

balfe1990

We're talking about games from years ago that no one plays anyway. Why not make them free2play, boost their communities' numbers which in turn might help people decide to go full whack and pay for XBL Gold to play newer releases. Or not. But it doesn't matter either way, no body is losing any money, they're only potentially making money.

Makesperfect sense no matter how you look at it.

[QUOTE="balfe1990"]

[QUOTE="TrooPlayer"]

Right ok so does that no defeat the purpose of paying for xbox live?

HilbillyRokstar

We're talking about games from years ago that no one plays anyway. Why not make them free2play, boost their communities' numbers which in turn might help people decide to go full whack and pay for XBL Gold to play newer releases. Or not. But it doesn't matter either way, no body is losing any money, they're only potentially making money.

Makesperfect sense no matter how you look at it.

They're operated on a Peer to Peer network, meaning there are no servers involved. And even if there were servers present originally, why not set the games up on a P2P network which is essentially free for them?

[QUOTE="HilbillyRokstar"][QUOTE="balfe1990"]

We're talking about games from years ago that no one plays anyway. Why not make them free2play, boost their communities' numbers which in turn might help people decide to go full whack and pay for XBL Gold to play newer releases. Or not. But it doesn't matter either way, no body is losing any money, they're only potentially making money.

Makesperfect sense no matter how you look at it.

balfe1990

They're operated on a Peer to Peer network, meaning there are no servers involved. And even if there were servers present originally, why not set the games up on a P2P network which is essentially free for them?

I think this is a good idea. The issue is that companies don't have the resources or desire to continue monitoring all of their old games. Even previous CoDs (which are not that old) are full of hackers and glitchers. Even if a P2P system exists, the fun could quickly be ruined. Not to mention that for many games the communities are not large enough for this. Even the NBA2K11 servers were shut down recently, and that game wasn't old at all.

If companies want to continue to support old games (like TF2 for example) then this would be a great idea. Updates are needed even for the oldest of online games, and if companies aren't willing to do that then there is no point.

I think this is a good idea. The issue is that companies don't have the resources or desire to continue monitoring all of their old games. Even previous CoDs (which are not that old) are full of hackers and glitchers. Even if a P2P system exists, the fun could quickly be ruined. Not to mention that for many games the communities are not large enough for this. Even the NBA2K11 servers were shut down recently, and that game wasn't old at all.

If companies want to continue to support old games (like TF2 for example) then this would be a great idea. Updates are needed even for the oldest of online games, and if companies aren't willing to do that then there is no point.

Jurassic85

They shut down the servers on older games. In the end, they are f2p... they just don't play.

You do realize microsoft doesn't own the games and would have to pay to developers to upload them to XBL, you can't just make them free for everyone. This idea may have some cool aspects, however all in all it is totally impractical.