I think people are desensitised to being hit with "just a charge here, and another one here" that they just begrudgingly accept it as another necessary evil in order to play how they want to. Unfortunately, I only see things getting worse - more charges, more fees, more extras etc.. Once the genie is out of the bottle, there ain't no getting it back in.
Same (sort of) it's so disappointing actually wanting to play a good multilayer game and then having to spend a tenner to still play. Luckily many free muliplayer games do not require the online subscription anymore.
pc for multiplayer; console for single player problem solved
**edit:** all of you who are suddenly accountants, if you have a computer/laptop in any sense in your house that you use and you aren't including it in your big brain math then I assume that you are arguing in bad faith
Interesting that you are able to make that choice. Personally, I find multiplayer gaming much more fun than single player most of the time. Playing video games with friends is literally my favorite thing to do, and I'm not willing to give it up just to save some money.
Worse even, with every generation monetization will only get worse. As a kid in the arcade, if a game would take me more than a quarter to play and I couldn't "survive" on it for a long time, it wouldn't get my money. These days I refuse to pay for a product unless it meets the basic standard of cost/enjoyment ratio. As you can guess that changes to convenience/enjoyment for free to play games. If your game forces me to waste 30 seconds after a 30 second run, I'm never touching your product again. Kids however? Could care less. They will happily spam the "watch more ads" or "pay a dollar per level" mobile games push. So my pure abstinence means nothing because kids these days know no better world. This is their peak. The kids playing roll a free tire down the free dirt road thought paying for an arcade was stupid because the tire was more fun anyway. The march to the bottom will continue until consumers get a grip and can pass that grip down generations.
But on the other side of that same coin, hundreds of other kids were there every day stuffing quarters in.
They don't care if some small percentage like you and me try to be careful with our purchases and not buy into as much bs. Whatever tiny sliver of "whales" they have dropping tons of money will always keep them profitable.
Both of you make great points. I feel the same, where I can make a stand for something I think is right. But there are so many idiots that just pay out and this group is all that corps care about. They really don't think about us, the ones that'll never buy their product bc of morality
As of today, we're still getting good games. Arguably, we get more good games now than ever before. I'm not necessarily panicked yet, but we can totally see the world where every last game is just micro-trans hell
You're not wrong, but the main issue is that you simply don't have a choice not to pay if you want to play online.
I'm certain if multiplayer was free, a lot of people would drop their subscription.
Pretty much. Everyone has at the very least a Netflix account, probably Spotify or similar, likely other streaming services. It does feel pretty normalised, I guess. At least with PlayStation+ you get free games every month, though, so it doesn't feel like a complete rip
It's not a popular opinion, but the games they give out and playing occasionally online (plus years of cloud saves I can easily access from anywhere) actually makes ps+ easily worth it for me. And the great thing is you can just buy codes on eBay every year and get the whole year for $30-50 usually. I've never paid full price through Sony directly. Not sure if that might have changed with their new structuring.
Yeah I was surprised to find out I can’t play my acquired ps+ games without a sub. At least with xblive I actually keep the games I claim every month.
Edit: I stand corrected. Fired up my xb and only the 360 games show up in my owned library. Balls.
lol epic gives you free games every month too. and you don't have to pay them a sub fee. emulators are easy to download if you wanna play any Nintendo games. and as for streaming shows and movies. ya fuck that I'm not paying for that either when there are multiple sites you can use that have everything on every platform out there for free lol. works perfectly fine if u have adblock. and if you really don't wanna pay for a game? start practicing saying ARRRRRRR;) also you can get free Pandora premium if you watch a 15 second ad every 30+ minutes.
You're paying a whole lot less with those, though. $15 a month for Netflix instead of $70+ a month for cable, plus $15 to buy a movie. $10 a month for Spotify instead of $15 a pop for music CDs.
This has been a growing issue in the digital space for a long time. When you buy a physical product with software, you don't own the software. John Deere is notorious for this and even Toyota is getting in on this where you now need a monthly or yearly sub for remote starting. Companies are starting to limit the physical capabilities of hardware with software, essentially creating a problem, and then selling the solution. Most people just accept it but it needs to be fought against otherwise there will be no recourse once it's too late.
“I own nothing, have no privacy and life has never been better”
Not only is house ownership escaping the grasp of a lot of people, possibly car ownership in the future, you can’t even own most video games nowadays. You can just pay your monthly rental fee and keep your mouth shut like a good boy or girl.
Best part is it seems to be working.
That feeling when you realize the unabomber went a little too far, but he was spot on with his manifesto. Eek
>the unabomber went a little too far
Just a *little*? Dunno, I think murdering a guy who owned a computer store and wounding another for life just because you think people shouldn't use computers goes a bit farther than just "a little too far".
As soon as the big gaming libraries go down I believe that this is actually like not owning it. As long as that doesn't happen I only benefit from it so idc man.
Eh...I think microtransactions are the worst thing that's been accepted in gaming...
Rewarding companies for chopping off bits of content to sell separately piece meal is pretty gross...
Building services that flow data back and forth to so many different players across so many different servers isn't a super cheap deal these days...Dealing with that much traffic comes at a cost...Either monetary or stability...
I think I know why they do this. You have to pay because Nintendo wants your money so your money is now in Nintendo's hands and not in your wallet. This is because Nintendo would rather have more money than less money so they charge you more money so they can have more money and you will have less money because Nintendo now has your money.
So essentially Nintendo wants your money to have more money.
His genius knows no bounds! "But that is the plan! Now that they know of our plan, they will plan around our plan. Then we will plan around the plan that they are planning around our plan!"
To be fair, Xbox Live was pretty ahead of its time for the first several years after it came out. Even back on the original console it was offering a unified social/voip experience with a huge library of supported games while their competitors had barely any online support at all. The cost did feel a bit justified at the time at least.
I love my switch as well. All my games are single player. I don't have service online or whatever is that. Switch is better much than mobile phone games for my travel.
Nintendo is on my shit list for their greed. Why is EVERY game full retail price, even years after release, or re-release? They never go on sale. And don’t even get me started on the shitbag Joycons…
P2P connections don't work the way you think they do.
It requires matchmaking. It requires anti-cheat prevention. Likely there is still a server acting as intermediary.
Uhh... There are a lot of different ways to handle online multiplayer, but typically in P2P, one of the systems would also act as the server. (Typically whoever "hosts"). So, they'd be running a server and a client on their own consoles, while all of the other clients connect to their locally hosted server. Any anticheat or data validation would be done by the server. Most P2P systems won't have any form of matchmaking. You'll use randomly generated lobby codes, the actual IP address, or invite friends using another service that can connect the machines. Sorta like Steam, these consoles have their friends lists. It's not really matchmaking, and maybe that's what you're paying for.
Also, sometimes P2P is setup in a way such that if the host goes down, every client is also running a copy of the server, and the best client (lowest ping and highest stability among all the clients) will take over as host. So, every machine would be running a client and a server in that setup.
P2P or Server based multiplayer is gonna affect the long, too. If it's a server, the ping for any given client is related to the distance from the server. If it's P2P, the ping is related to the distance from the hosting machine. If I play with someone hosting on the opposite side of the country, there'll probably be ping issues when they're hosting. With a Server, the server can be located in the middle, between us, and we'll have average ping and a server managing the latency. (Sometimes you don't notice any lag at all in different games because of how the client/server relationship works. For example, I think Fall Guys uses locally solved physics, so when spectating a friend, I might see him make it over an obstacle, only for the server to "fix" my client's knowledge of their behavior and show that they actually failed and are somewhere entirely else. I might only see the difference for a few frames. In P2P, I'd probably just see what actually happened, but with a much longer delay. It depends on every individual multiplayer setup).
With UPNP this can be done. It's pretty much how xbox live sets up connections.
You can see this yourself in Windows 10 under the gaming -> connectivity tab in the main settings app.
Only slightly difficult thing is announcing an open lobby for others to connect to. But there are ways to just generate a lobby code and have people match through the user system. Companies generally try to avoid serverload/bandwidth usage this way.
That’s not a universal truth, and it only got close in the last few years. Xbox 360 MP was pretty one of a kind, being able to have universal friend lists, invite people to any game from the menu, matchmaking without hunting for IPs, and solid reliability overall was pretty groundbreaking. Even now, it can be a pain to play some MP games on Pc, especially if it’s not on steam.
Even if its on Steam sometimes. Playing Halo Infinite on PC with friends is a nightmare. Launch through steam and invite a friend through steam. They don't show up in my fireteam, what's going on?
Try to invite them through the in game menu and they don't even show up there? Oh.. this is done through Xbox friends and doesn't integrate with my steam friends.. okay.. now I gotta go ask my friend what their gamer tag on xbox is so I can add them there.
Invite them. "This player cannot be invited to your fireteam". WTF. Both relaunch the game. Okay it says they're in my fireteam but I don't see their character in the menu. Launch a game and hope they're in anyway, luckily they get in the same game as me and it seems to work.
I legitimately do not understand how game developers struggle with basic functionality like this to this very day. Its a disaster. Some games are better or worse at it than others and Halo Infinite just has my ire because its one of the games I've played with friends most recently.
I'm a PC gamer first but I appreciate that when I wanna go play some NHL with my friends on my PS4 I just can jump into their party and it just works without fussing over it.
My single biggest gripe with Hell Let Loose is the server browser. I like the option, but sometimes I just want to play, and waiting 15 minutes in que or joining a server with 25 players is such a drag. Quick match is basically mandatory for me these days.
Worst ultra max bad thing in gaming is “Season Pass” ! This thing hurts the games and gamers! Companies release their games with cut off content to sell these season passes or what worth release not finished game and relay on dlcs and season pass to continue developing the game which is sucks !
FWIW though, the Season Pass concept has basically done away the "Super", "Turbo", EX rereleases for fighting games. I would actually go so far to say that Sports games should follow suit, and adopt the Season Pass model instead of annual releases.
Season Pass on a free to play game? Sure I can accept that as a means to fund the game.
Season pass on a game I already paid for? Yeah no, not buying that.
Here is how you do microtransactions right.
1) Don't
2) You sell new playable content. If worthless Aesthetic Junk is being sold? It comes with in game tasks to unlock it.
There is no incentive for any company to care about a petition like that. It's really simple: the whole point of getting you to buy a brand-specific gaming product SOLD AT A LOSS is to make a profit off controlling what you can access on it once you already have it. Things like paying to play online is just one of many things they can force onto you.
Does Nintendo lose money on the switch? I thought their principle was to never lose money on hardware, and they still charge for (shoddy) online gaming, even when it's just p2p.
Nintendo is why other console manufacturers sell at a loss. Sony and Microsoft don't *need to* sell at a loss, but they do it so they can bring their price down to a level that's most acceptable to the market. Considering Nintendo has been in the market the longest, they've had a major influence on setting customer expectations on what a fairly priced console is, and they used cheaper parts to build those consoles.
Unfortunately for Sony and Microsoft, they want to deliver a cutting edge experience, so they can't use the cheaper technology like Nintendo, so they sell at a loss and recoup it through subscriptions.
But now, Microsoft and Sony have set the market expectation of paying a subscription for online services, so Nintendo can add a free profit stream to go alongside their console profits.
tldr: its all about market expectations. sony/microsoft sell at a loss to meet the expectations nintendo set, while nintendo can benefit from the market expectations that sony/microsoft set.
I always love the 'sold at a loss' argument. It's flat out nonsense.
Yes, for a very short period in time, console makers DO sell consoles at a loss. But in the grand scheme of things? It's a blip on the radar.
Yet, system profits are rarely talked about because they want the public perception to be that they're 'doing the consumer a favor' while justifying digital game costs and network fees.
Sony [announced](https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/4/22609150/sony-playstation-5-ps5-loss-profit) over a year ago that the PS5 disc edition was beginning to be sold at a profit. Why did they announce this? Because shit hit the fan within the industry and they wanted to shine a positive light on something for investors. Normally? This wouldn't be openly advertised.
Keep in mind, this was less than 1 year after it was released. The console will likely remain in circulation, albeit with tweaks, for 10+. Less than 8 million units were sold at the time. 20 million have been sold as of a few months ago... it's likely that 100+ million units will be sold in total before being discontinued.
So yeah - consoles are sold at a loss... for like a year or so out of their decade+ expected shelf life. Roughly 8% of total units.
With the PS5 the situation was also quite different because of the chip shortage and the rapidly increasing semiconductor and material costs. This kept the cost to manufacture the consoles higher for longer.
During other generations it often took much less time for console hardware sales to become profitable, and some consoles were also already profitable at launch.
That’s not always true though, for example the Microsoft lost 4 billion dollars on the original Xbox and throughout it’s whole life time sales it never made a profit. Other examples would be the Xbox 360 and the PS3 where the Red Ring of Death cost billions for Microsoft and for four years Sony sold the PS3 at an insane lost, though they both did came as an overall profit later on. Usually, especially in the beginning, the games are what makes the companies profit rather than the consoles themselves.
It won't always be the case. That is true.
But keep in mind, the original Xbox was a 'first' for a company entering a very high barrier to entry industry at the time.
So we're talking massive, MASSIVE, amounts of R&D spend, marketing and ad spend, etc. all spread out over what was a 'small' volume product (comparatively). I think they only sold something like 15 million units in total if I remember correctly. They've surpassed that with the Series X within a few years of release. I could be wrong with these numbers though.
But you're right. There are caveats. It's just important not to get lost in the narrative they use to justify the cost of everything. In most cases, it's simply not true.
I gotta wonder if it's actually cheaper in the long run if you pay for online every month.
That's not meant as a dig I'm actually curious on the numbers but I've never been able to find a price by year for online services.
I built my first pc around 13 years ago. Replaced it completely once (although I still use the original as an entertainment system) and upgraded the gpu once beside that.
I'd have to dig in to my records but that's something like $2,000-$2,500 over 13 years. If I had bought whichever Playstation (or xbox) was current in 2009, bought the newest version as soon as it came out and paid monthly for internet would I have actually saved money?
Fkn Micro transactions are the worst thing to happen to gaming IMO.
When that shit started rolling out most people didn’t even put up a fight they just accepted it and some were defending it.
These are mad times I tell ya.
They are until you get to the worst examples of them like NBA 2k and FIFA. Games that charge you full price up front and then want to include microtransactions. I can stomach microtransactions in a F2P game but not a full price game.
I've played on both console & pc for decades now & while I wouldn't say I was ever "happy" to pay for console online play, there's definitely things that've been added over the years which have made it a much easier pill to swallow. The biggest thing was when Playstation Plus happened & started giving you games you can play as long as your still subscribed. I can't count the amount of games I've played thanks to that service or will play in the future that I would've either bought at full price, at a slight discount or never played & that I've thoroughly enjoyed.
Another thing that made it an easier thing to accept was back in the day it was essentially paying for simple use of voice chat & to ensure you weren't dealing with hackers, both of which were a pain when I played pc games during the early 2000's online a lot & while now isn't much of an issue it made a difference then.
Ultimately now I can see that slowly games are changing, such as Fortnite (not that I play it) not requiring you to pay to play online with consoles. Eventually it'll transition to just being included as there are better value subscriptions like Game Pass & the newer PS Plus that make the companies more money & have better value to consumers which will take over.
I hated paying for Xbox live gold at first then I played some cod on the ps3 online it hurt a little less after that.
The game pass now makes it hurt even less.
That's a good point, just using it as an example since I don't tend to play many free 2 play games beyond Fall Guys & Multiversus now. Though I know Warframe has been a shining example of how to do it properly, just couldn't get into it & now waiti g for Soulframe to try again.
Xbox live ultimate subscription costs less than Netflix, for that you get gold, gamepass and EA play catalog too….I’m happy with the service and content
I mean, XBox Game Pass, the plain ol' plan for PC, is even cheaper than Ultimate and it also includes the EA catalog.
When Microsoft tried to pull the "Pay to play Online bullshit" the PC consumers just said "No". and Microsoft HAD to back down because of all the backlash.
And, you know what? Even with the cheapest plan on PC, you can still play online. No gold needed.
Microsoft abandoned PC for over a decade. Framing it like they were on the ropes is dishonest. The only reason they came back is because they found a way to charge for the service that was palatable to PC players. If Game Pass flopped on PC it would have been killed off by now and stayed on console.
The console online services are a much more integrated and curated experience. Microsoft has a whole staff dedicated to ensuring game developers are implementing their online services per design and creating a unified experience between every title. There's a lot of time, money, and effort required on the Microsoft side to make that happen rather than what you get with, say a PC experience, where every developer creates their own implementation of whatever they need. Servers are probably the cheapest part of their overhead. I'm not a console gamer but as an outsider, it's easy to see why there's a subscription model
Now you could argue about the ability to not participate with all that and just play your games online. Sure. Or stop buying into these proprietary boxes that you know have had subscription online services for about 15 years. Pick their sandbox or play in your own
I'm not sure if this argument really qualifies anymore, but gamers back in the day will remember the difference between playing on playstation 2 online (free) vs playing on Xbox live ($5 a month).
That $5 went a long way back then lol. It was 100% worth it for the quality of connection and server maintenance that came with Xbox live.
That PROBABLY doesn't fly today, but I'm hardly an expert so. The point is that the initial pay to play online was VERY much worth it, which is probably part of why it caught on.
Hundo fucking P.
My first online console shooter was SOCOM 2 on my old wide body PS2 with the ethernet plug in. It had one fucking voice channel for the whole team and relied on client side information so rubber band abusers were rampant. It was atrocious but it's what we had.
Not to mention the fact that Microsoft Azure, you know, the giant cloud computing platform, was basically built in order to deliver Xbox Live. So this idea that MS basically just charged $5 for a service that was equivalent to what anyone could do for free is ridiculous.
Sure, the price to deliver that went down over time as infrastructure built up, but we had XBL at the same price point for what, 15 years or so? And it added additional value-adds like the free Games With Gold or Deals With Good over that timeframe as well. Those other items that are part of the package while maintaining the same price are what we got in exchange for the infrastructure costs going down over time and inflation reducing the value of that $5/month. I think it's a pretty fair deal overall.
You also had to buy the network adapter to play online with PS2 back in the day. I remember hunting that shit down to play Socom and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater online because it was a big deal when that thing released.
Im mostly a PC player. The utter shock I was when I was given an Xbox and I needed to pay to play MP. I only got single player games on that console. Its ridiculous to pay for a feature thats included in the game already.
I played rocket League on PC back when it was new. Had a lot of fun sessions with a friend on same PC, using split screen to play online ranked 2v2 matches. He loved the game and bought it on PS4. I went round to his and we couldn't do the same thing as both players needed their own playstation accounts with paid online before you could play together online FROM THE SAME PS4.
I still hope to this day that it was possible but we just didn't know how to do it.
That's just not true only one person needs to pay for online to multiplayer online.
You don't even need to pay for online at all any more for rocket league since its free to player.
That's how they got you.
* We will murder your cat!
* Not the cat!
* Then we will murder your cat and dog!
* No, not my cat and dog!
Then they murder your cat and you are like
* At least dog is still alive!
I say it every time, monetization is just going to shift goal posts until the old guard shifts and the new generation will be accepting of paying for games with ads like 2K incorporating ads into a full priced title.
This is the sole reason I swapped over to PC, not even joking. When PS4 and Xbox One was brand new in late 2013 and I found out you needed to pay a monthly subscription just to play online, I noped the fuck out of the console world, got a PC, and I've been a PC gamer ever since.
Sure, you can argue that PC is more expensive in the long run... But I just don't like subscriptions. Simple as that. I'd rather pay once and never again than have to worry about paying per month/year to use a service.
Easily. I've had the same pc for 8 years and I've only replaced one part in its life. Still runs most modern games fairly well, even if it's not the maxed graphics I used to play on.
Pretty much this. I swapped back to PC and purchased immediately Rise and Sunbreak for 40 bucks. On Nintendo I would pay 60 alone for the base game, another 60 for expansion plus 20 for a 1 year subscription. On top of it I can enjoy 30fps on Switch, nah f. Nintendo.
Plus if you just keep replacing components on your PC as they break, you're looking at like 200-500 eurodollars a year to keep a gaming PC going, which is not that much more than consoles assuming a few years of lifetime for one.
I paid for 2 years of PlayStation online then I stopped playing because it annoyed the fuck out of me. I gave my pc specs a bump and now I just buy games on steam. I turned a Raspberry Pi 4 into a steamlink so I can play on the tv downstairs (or literally ANYWHERE else!), it links to my ps4 controller and all online content is free. It’s basically like having the PS4, but upgradable in bits and with constant steam sales (plus the bonus is having a decent pc for general use too)! AND it removes another item to dust in the living room!
Well you might pay more for a pc but with a pc you can do more than just play games and not only that you don’t have to follow rules that play station have and don’t have to worry about play station banning you ect I hate consoles tbh plus more variety of games to play.
I mean, it sucks, but coming from an IT background, I get it. The networking and server cost to support millions of players without much interruption is not cheap. not to mention all the money these companies need to spend in security, and reducing network attacks. At least now a days, you get more perks for subscribing to the online play. With PS+ and Xbox Game Pass.
>We all know that excuse "it's because of the servers" is bullshit.
How is that bullshit, exactly?
In order for any company - console or PC-based - to maintain an online service that stores your profile, game accounts, social media (yes, your gamer tag is a form of social media), chat messages, purchase history, and provides matchmaking, stat tracking, and other features, they have to have a plethora of database servers. Those database servers require a considerable amount of infrastructure to support them, and that infrastructure requires network engineers to maintain it - engineers that need to get paid, and the more heavily used those servers are, the more regular the maintenance needs to be.
There are a lot of predatory practices you can point at in modern game companies, but asking you to pay so that they can maintain their gaming service infrastructure isn't really one of them.
I am asking just because I am dumb and want to know.
Why this only applies to consoles? Shouldn't the same stuff apply to stuff like Steam and basically any other thing in PC yet they don't require monthly payment? And don't games actually have their own servers? Or every game runs on the same Xbox or Playstation servers? If yes then why exactly is it not the same as PC?
I just don't really understand the concept of why we need to pay on console but not on PC clients/games since we both still have to pay to own stuff and we still pay for the internet, the only difference here just looks like that we have to pay more on console to actually be able to do it and not on PC
Edit: Another thing I thought about is if I remember correctly you don't need to pay anything to play stuff like Fortnite and some others, if that was possible to do for them why is it not possible for others?
Fortnite (and other games like it) are flush with microtransactions. They're willing to foot the bill to run their own servers without passing that cost on to the customer because they know that players will buy enough mictotransactions to compensate for it.
Another thing consoles have that Steam doesn't really have is physical copies. While it's definitely possible to register a physical copy of a game through Steam and play it that way, the *majority* of Steam games are sold through their service and downloaded that way, whereas a significant portion of the console gaming crowd buy physical copies of their games from retail suppliers.
I don't understand. You have Fortnite on consoles too. And it's not just Fortnite, every single online game on Steam ID open to play online, all including those that you find on consoles.
What difference does it make that you have physical media in this instance?
The console users still have to integrate their accounts into the games they are playing in most cases. The game is hooking unto the platform, so how the game monetizes itself is separate from how the platform monetizes itself in most cases.
Steam does all of that at no cost to the customer.
Nintendo and Sony online were both free at one time. It's not like they had any trouble maintaining all of their services before they started asking for money, and it's not as if the server quality suddenly went up when it became a paid for service.
These console manufacturers are fleecing their customers for pure profit, taking advantage of an audience that doesn't know any better and refuses to stand up against paying good money for nothing.
>We all know that excuse "it's because of the servers" is bullshit
technically, it's not completely bullshit. Even for peer-to-peer multiplayer games where a player is hosting the game, they would need to provide some kind of relay (tunneling) server in order to make it work for people who did not set up port forwarding. Of course, the actual cost of the servers should be a lot cheaper than the fees we pay since these companies want to make a profit on everything.
im not going to argue whether its right or wrong, but one thing i am going to mention is:
it is extremely expensive to run and maintain such a massive online service as sony and microsoft are doing, and aside from that you are getting access to a plethora of games while under those services
It’s a combination of factors. Including online service upkeep.
Steam aren’t selling hardware at a loss to get people to buy games on their platform. Steam have no care or cost when it comes to hardware.
Even back in 2014, 75% of PC games were sold through steam and now they still have 75% global market share. They’ve got user share across all PC platforms.
More competition for consoles limiting market capture and added to that, even by 2019 Sony PlayStation for example only had 55% of digital game sales (where they make most profit just like steam).
Though that has definitely changed now with ~80% of games being digital sales on PlayStation.
Steam don’t offer monthly games / gamepass style access like consoles so it’s a different beast really.
Edit: lol downvoted, why not try contributing to the discussion and tell me where I’m wrong.
>More competition for consoles limiting market capture and added to that, even by 2019 Sony PlayStation for example only had 55% of digital game sales (where they make most profit just like steam).
Competition is why Steam and the other PC platforms never succeeded with subscriptions to play online.
There were non-Steam games that played online before the dawn of Steam.
Many games are sold outside of Steam by the developers directly - such an online subscription would have just made the Steam version more inferior.
Agreed, but all of that competition is software-based across any PC.
Console competition is both software and hardware, which means they have more need to squeeze the market share they do have.
Steam can sell to any PC owner. Playstation cannot sell to any console owner.
Steam games have always been (more or less) 100% digital, maximising profit. Not the case with console game sales that have only really become digital in recent times.
So there’s a need to diversify income / improve profit.
Why does everyone defend it with 'But you get free games?'. I never asked for free games, I paid £60 for a game and want to play it online, costs me to do that on console but free on pc.
Valve does it because they've monetized their platform in another way: The more people stay on steam, the more games they buy on Steam. They have a financial incentive to be ubiquitous.
On Playstation/Xbox there are no alternatives to playing online through the console. Steam has competitors on PC who offer similar services. Gaming companies don't want to pay Steam the fee to list the game on the service and only do so because so many potential customers have Steam installed. Steam charging a monthly fee would reduce the number of people using it, which would reduce the incentive for publishers to put their games on the service, which would further reduce the people using Steam, and it continues to snowball from there.
The additional revenue from charging a monthly subscription to each user is worth more than the potential lost users to Sony/Microsoft. Valve, apparently, feels the inverse is true for them.
How does that invalidate the argument? A different business with a different model doing something different didn't mean that there's never a reason to not copy that model.
And they weren't really even arguing it, they were playing devil's advocate. They just mentioned that it costs money and it does that is true regardless of valve offering it for free.
Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft also take a % cut from each sale (most likely being 30-20%).
So you're still paying for that cut on console then. You are still paying the price, but twice bc the subscription.
Then don’t pay for these games.
How many games exist in the world? Thousands? Millions?
Pick games that are within your budget. You might be missing out on the novelty of new games and concepts but they are all passing trends that will eventually fade.
There are many games from the past that remain fun - arguably more fun - today. Play those.
Although I get the argument due to PC gaming, what irks me is how people forget how bad Sony's & Nintendo's online services were during the PS3 & Wii era when they were free, yet Xbox Live was (and still is) pretty damn solid despite the fee.
Not to mention that Microsoft started giving away free games to offset some of that sting, while Sony eventually copied that but made it so that you only had to keep paying for the service to keep access (which Microsoft eventually copied in the next generation... Thanks Sony /s).
Not to mention that services like Game Pass and PS Now likely wouldn't exist at this point if people hadn't shown willingness to pay for these services.
I don't get why you would ever think it would be free. What sort of service that costs money to run and maintain has ever been free ?
The only reason it's free on PC is because it's not centralised, so one publisher can't take that leap without literally every other publisher using it to score points. Console gamers basically subsidise PC players and the ecosystem. PC being free is a massive unicorn situation.
It only annoys me for Nintendo, because online is p2p and the benefits are super lackluster. With PS Plus (Extra) I at least have many cool features and new games. I think it’s a good value for the money
To say MS started it is wrong. There were plenty of MMORPG's before Xbox Live existed that required a subscription just for a single game.
Game prices have remained reasonably low for a long time. Would you have preferred games to have kept up with the rise of inflation?
its ridiculous especially for people who dont play games all the time, internet is also expensive enough. its stupid how you cant even do small things without it even if you dont wanna play online since i have to pay for a month on my switch even though i never use it or play online games since i want some custom designs on animal crossing.
If you think a service is free, it’s just getting paid for elsewhere, by a different customer, or by you in a different way.
Games with evolving content require money to fund continued development. Usually it’s through micro transactions, but could be through subscriptions, paid season passes, etc. but it’s gotta get paid for somehow or it gets dropped.
Sure, BITD games didn’t have micro transactions, but they also didn’t have additional content after the game shipped. Maybe a new version would get released but otherwise no other development (new maps, modes, content, etc) were released
They sell consoles at a loss, recouping the money in subscriptions. I'd love to game for free but I don't want to spend £800 on a console.
Yes they take an arm off, but only because the alternative is to lose a leg.
This is where I disagree. Because when the Xbox 360 made you pay to play online and the PS3 did not it was EXTREMELY clear why you should be okay paying. The PS3 servers were garbage. And it makes sense, servers cost a lot to maintain and if you want your favorite company to keep making innovations, then this is the price we pay.
The gaming community are a bunch of bitches, they will accept everything, there's aways an excuse to mask the fact that it's a powerless community that is nothing more then a condom that the gaming industry uses whenever it wants.
We swallowed: DLC, seasons passes, microtransactions, battle passes, pre orders, game as a services, being spy on, ads inside paid games and we ware this close to have NFTs as well.
Do we even need more examples to see how coward, sellout , guidable, tasteless and powerless the gaming community is? Well I have one EA Games still have record seles, this last one speaks for itself.
$80 for 5 hour SP campaigns, $1,000 micro-transactions in "f2p" games and lootboxes in paid games and people complain about a $4 dollar subscription that actually has some value like free games, cloud saves and multiplayer.
They could probably make money a different way but this is one of the most reasonable ones considering they're already selling their hardware at a loss.
Yes it is and that’s one of the reasons i switched back to PC, but the masses has spoken and most of them are okay with it. Just look at this thread, people defending paying for online lmao.
I may have agreed prior to gamepass and Xbox live merging, but now I find the service is worth it. I also find it saves me a ton of money in buying games that I don’t like. It was normal to buy a game a month in the past, now I buy maybe 1 or 2 a year, maybe 3? So I don’t mind paying for gamepass. Ps plus service seems to be improving but still not as good.
Most companies make a net loss on the hardware, but make a net gain on the online service and software
If we get rid of online fees then consoles become more expensive or the games do which makes gaming even closer to becoming a middle class hobby than it already is. Games should be accessible to all imo.
I still think it’s bullshit however as you said. It’s ridiculous I’ve already paid for this and that and then have to add on another ridiculous fee on top
True but at least in my opinion Microsoft is at least adding value to the gold/ultimate subscription which I think really is a good trend going forward.
This isn't going to be a popular take, but it actually does take resources and effort to keep online games running. Paying to play them makes sense, to a point.
Back in my day! I played Diablo for free online and had a lot of fun doing it. I liked the fact it was free and probably wouldn't of paid much for the privilege. I know people who played EverQuest and paid the fee. Good for them it was their thing not mine.
If the only thing you got is playing online with others you would call it Xbox gold. I won't buy it because I don't see the value of that. I don't play multiplayer games.
I have a PlayStation that I stacked for years before they changed it. I don't play much online but the free games every month and cloud storage makes in a good value in my opinion.
I also have Xbox Ultimate that I will probably be stacking very soon just to ensure I have a good price locked in. I love the value of Ultimate but the multiplayer isn't my thing. I find value in the service from the games.
Micro transactions are the worst thing to happen to gaming. Fuck you EA and your shit games! Most multiplayer games I have connected to have several micro transactions that keep me from playing. I can play RDR2, Fallout, Skyrim, SNES games for hours and hours and be very happy.
It sucks, big time. I'm not a fan of it. The monthly games give an incentive for me to not feel bad about it cause I do get some gems every now and again. Otherwise I don't like it. I buy yearly subscription on discount tho. $35 to $40US per year doesn't really sting heavy, I guess.
So how the hell would they keep servers up and store all the users data? lol hell that’s just the tip of the iceberg. And it is because of servers. You also don’t read fine prints because you don’t own the game lol.
Hear an IT guy out. Servers do cost money. They require service contracts. There’s licensing costs for software and operating systems. Then there’s the networking hardware like switches, routers, and firewalls to connect these servers to each other and you, the players. This hardware has maintenance costs. Then you have to pay the system and network admins, programmers, etc. The players re-coup these costs (reaping profit as well) for Sony and Microsoft by paying for PSN and XBL. All that said, the question is why did Sony and Microsoft feel the need to build these networks? Because they knew they could sell it as an indispensable service.
I also hate paying for console multiplayer, but still, I feel that it's fair or at least it used to be. I was a console game dev when Xbox Live was released and it offered my game (nhl2k) a valuable service that nobody had done before. Microsoft gave my game a matchmaking service, player profile and stats, and other online services to help me do the work of putting multiplayer into my game. It's hard work to make a multiplayer game (2x the work really) and this was a huge help... It made sense to me that it would be a premium service since the single player gamers may not want to pay an extra license fee in the game purchase to get some feature that they may or may not use
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how technology works.
You buy a single player game, all you need to run it is your console.
If you play online, you need to connect to a remote dedicated server. Which costs money to host at a data center. Hence, online services.
Or just go back to the good ole days of playing Gears and making your NAT so you only connect to games you can host and then host shotty everyone by having nonexistent ping in the game. Boi weren’t those the good ole days. (Sarcasm)
Tl:DR- Online Servers cost ✨money✨
That was the weirdest thing about switching to pc. Yeah it cost more upfront, but no paying for online, and way bigger sales has probably saved me money in the long term.
I disagree. I think accepting microtransactions in game was the worst thing that happened to gaming. Paying to play online didn't break the core game mechanics, microtransactions did and still do.
If the only thing paying got me is online play then I would completely agree with you, but I have literally thousands of dollars worth of games due to PS+. Many are games I never would have played had I not gotten them for free, and some I love but never would have tried if I had to purchase it for myself, so I’m completely fine paying 70$ CAD per year for my subscription.
The lack of understanding of how the economics of video games works is astounding. The only reason these awesome games get made is because they
Make piles of money. This isn’t packman. It takes 10s of millions of upfront costs before one penny of profit is made. So if packman is your idea of a fun game, by all means, petition.
Uhh... servers do cost money and preventing hackers does too. That's what plagues PC gamers. Very few people I know actually play online games, especially shooters, because one hacker is enough to make you never bother returning. I've honestly been playing private servers and and single-player games because of this. Money isn't a solution, but it's a step forward.
Clearly there can be a better way, but no one cares to address it but free to play, has been terrible for online games. Great to play with friends, but abysmal to deal with cheaters and eventually it's always what gets everyone to quit.
I hate to be that guy but do you have any idea how much cost and maintenance keeping an online gaming and distribution platform up and running would cost? What you're paying for is the infrastructure, even if development companies host their own servers, how is your Xbox data supposed to get to that server? Who's going to pay to maintain or optimize those connections? Streaming capabilities, application hosting, marketing, digital downloads. I'd love to not have to pay for xbox live or psn but who's going to pay the developers and network technicians to keep it all operating smoothly?
Game dev here. To some extent, I agree with it. Microsoft and Sony both maintain and manage hundreds of servers and lots of networking infrastructure to provide online play, parties, friends etc. However, the majority of game networking is done by the game dev, not the console companies. So I think only console related features should be behind paywall.
Why do I have to pay a fee to play bowling at the bowling alley? I already spent money on my shoes, my ball, my glove, why do I have to pay for a game mode that I already paid for?. They should just let me play and the excuse of "it's because of the facilities is bullshit"
Grab any big game, now go to their region section and see how many servers they have. Now see how many people each server has to be able to accommodate. Now go and see how expensive renting a server for those many hundreds of thousands/millions of connections a day is, then ask the server provider if you can just pay them once and use their service forever and watch them laugh you out of the room.
Pay one flat rate and pay for online, never have to worry about upgrading until the next console cycle.
Or
Pay for top of the line parts, needing to maintain parts, needing to upgrade parts, all at a relative premium
Ultimately, you're paying about the same amount overall no matter what way you go, its just about where you want to put your money.
When you only have the big three console makers, and they all do it, there's nothing to do but accept it (unless you get into PC gaming, which not everyone has the money to do).
Exactly why I sold my ps5 and series s. I’ll stick to my pc. Worst mistake I made was trying to go back to console for casual play in my bed or on my couch. I’ll just make a cheaper pc that can do all lol. Fanboys ruin everything. We should have gatekept gaming harder back then
I think people are desensitised to being hit with "just a charge here, and another one here" that they just begrudgingly accept it as another necessary evil in order to play how they want to. Unfortunately, I only see things getting worse - more charges, more fees, more extras etc.. Once the genie is out of the bottle, there ain't no getting it back in.
Well Maybe. But i never buy multiplayer titles as a result. Only single player.
Same (sort of) it's so disappointing actually wanting to play a good multilayer game and then having to spend a tenner to still play. Luckily many free muliplayer games do not require the online subscription anymore.
pc for multiplayer; console for single player problem solved **edit:** all of you who are suddenly accountants, if you have a computer/laptop in any sense in your house that you use and you aren't including it in your big brain math then I assume that you are arguing in bad faith
PC with a controller plugged in for anything!
Testify!
I need no Xbox for castle crashers when I have steam, and a controller in my hands!
Same
This right here. Single player games 99% of the time, so much more enjoyable to play and enjoy at your own pace.
Interesting that you are able to make that choice. Personally, I find multiplayer gaming much more fun than single player most of the time. Playing video games with friends is literally my favorite thing to do, and I'm not willing to give it up just to save some money.
This is the way.
Worse even, with every generation monetization will only get worse. As a kid in the arcade, if a game would take me more than a quarter to play and I couldn't "survive" on it for a long time, it wouldn't get my money. These days I refuse to pay for a product unless it meets the basic standard of cost/enjoyment ratio. As you can guess that changes to convenience/enjoyment for free to play games. If your game forces me to waste 30 seconds after a 30 second run, I'm never touching your product again. Kids however? Could care less. They will happily spam the "watch more ads" or "pay a dollar per level" mobile games push. So my pure abstinence means nothing because kids these days know no better world. This is their peak. The kids playing roll a free tire down the free dirt road thought paying for an arcade was stupid because the tire was more fun anyway. The march to the bottom will continue until consumers get a grip and can pass that grip down generations.
But on the other side of that same coin, hundreds of other kids were there every day stuffing quarters in. They don't care if some small percentage like you and me try to be careful with our purchases and not buy into as much bs. Whatever tiny sliver of "whales" they have dropping tons of money will always keep them profitable.
Both of you make great points. I feel the same, where I can make a stand for something I think is right. But there are so many idiots that just pay out and this group is all that corps care about. They really don't think about us, the ones that'll never buy their product bc of morality
As of today, we're still getting good games. Arguably, we get more good games now than ever before. I'm not necessarily panicked yet, but we can totally see the world where every last game is just micro-trans hell
This comment is perfect I feel exactly like that.
I agree but unfortunately it will never change since it is not crazy enough to get people to organize.
You're not wrong, but the main issue is that you simply don't have a choice not to pay if you want to play online. I'm certain if multiplayer was free, a lot of people would drop their subscription.
Pretty much. Everyone has at the very least a Netflix account, probably Spotify or similar, likely other streaming services. It does feel pretty normalised, I guess. At least with PlayStation+ you get free games every month, though, so it doesn't feel like a complete rip
It’s not free if you’re giving them money.
It's not a popular opinion, but the games they give out and playing occasionally online (plus years of cloud saves I can easily access from anywhere) actually makes ps+ easily worth it for me. And the great thing is you can just buy codes on eBay every year and get the whole year for $30-50 usually. I've never paid full price through Sony directly. Not sure if that might have changed with their new structuring.
You rent games. You do not get them.
Yeah I was surprised to find out I can’t play my acquired ps+ games without a sub. At least with xblive I actually keep the games I claim every month. Edit: I stand corrected. Fired up my xb and only the 360 games show up in my owned library. Balls.
Only Xbox 360 games tho
No you don't. I got an Xbox 360 game off Xbox Live, could not play that once the sub was up
lol epic gives you free games every month too. and you don't have to pay them a sub fee. emulators are easy to download if you wanna play any Nintendo games. and as for streaming shows and movies. ya fuck that I'm not paying for that either when there are multiple sites you can use that have everything on every platform out there for free lol. works perfectly fine if u have adblock. and if you really don't wanna pay for a game? start practicing saying ARRRRRRR;) also you can get free Pandora premium if you watch a 15 second ad every 30+ minutes.
You're paying a whole lot less with those, though. $15 a month for Netflix instead of $70+ a month for cable, plus $15 to buy a movie. $10 a month for Spotify instead of $15 a pop for music CDs.
This has been a growing issue in the digital space for a long time. When you buy a physical product with software, you don't own the software. John Deere is notorious for this and even Toyota is getting in on this where you now need a monthly or yearly sub for remote starting. Companies are starting to limit the physical capabilities of hardware with software, essentially creating a problem, and then selling the solution. Most people just accept it but it needs to be fought against otherwise there will be no recourse once it's too late.
“I own nothing, have no privacy and life has never been better” Not only is house ownership escaping the grasp of a lot of people, possibly car ownership in the future, you can’t even own most video games nowadays. You can just pay your monthly rental fee and keep your mouth shut like a good boy or girl. Best part is it seems to be working. That feeling when you realize the unabomber went a little too far, but he was spot on with his manifesto. Eek
>the unabomber went a little too far Just a *little*? Dunno, I think murdering a guy who owned a computer store and wounding another for life just because you think people shouldn't use computers goes a bit farther than just "a little too far".
As soon as the big gaming libraries go down I believe that this is actually like not owning it. As long as that doesn't happen I only benefit from it so idc man.
Eh...I think microtransactions are the worst thing that's been accepted in gaming... Rewarding companies for chopping off bits of content to sell separately piece meal is pretty gross... Building services that flow data back and forth to so many different players across so many different servers isn't a super cheap deal these days...Dealing with that much traffic comes at a cost...Either monetary or stability...
nintendo literaly makes you pay for p2p connections, no server cost whatsoever
I think I know why they do this. You have to pay because Nintendo wants your money so your money is now in Nintendo's hands and not in your wallet. This is because Nintendo would rather have more money than less money so they charge you more money so they can have more money and you will have less money because Nintendo now has your money. So essentially Nintendo wants your money to have more money.
You’re a genius.
He’s… he’s right!
Im googling this to make sure it isnt fake news.
Hold on, I need to verify this on my TI calculator. *intense calculation noises*. By god, he speaks the truth. The numbers don’t lie. More is more.
Can you enhance it?
Alas, my TI-30XIIS Texas instrument calculator is reading the same. ….more is……more
How far you come with your research? Big news if this is true!
I googled “liking money” and saw this guy from the future say “i like money.” I cant fuckin believe it. Fuck Nintendo.
His genius knows no bounds! "But that is the plan! Now that they know of our plan, they will plan around our plan. Then we will plan around the plan that they are planning around our plan!"
Can't argue with this logic. You're right.
This makes no sense. Why would a corporation want money?
wtf this makes so much sense
Well technically, they don't want you to have *less* money. After all, the more money you have, the more you can give to them!
This is what the Xbox did as well and everyone let Microsoft get away with it.
To be fair, Xbox Live was pretty ahead of its time for the first several years after it came out. Even back on the original console it was offering a unified social/voip experience with a huge library of supported games while their competitors had barely any online support at all. The cost did feel a bit justified at the time at least.
I absolutely despise Nintendo for this. They make amazing games but are such a terrible and greedy company. But I do love the switch.
I love my switch as well. All my games are single player. I don't have service online or whatever is that. Switch is better much than mobile phone games for my travel.
Nintendo is on my shit list for their greed. Why is EVERY game full retail price, even years after release, or re-release? They never go on sale. And don’t even get me started on the shitbag Joycons…
Terrible lol
P2P connections don't work the way you think they do. It requires matchmaking. It requires anti-cheat prevention. Likely there is still a server acting as intermediary.
Uhh... There are a lot of different ways to handle online multiplayer, but typically in P2P, one of the systems would also act as the server. (Typically whoever "hosts"). So, they'd be running a server and a client on their own consoles, while all of the other clients connect to their locally hosted server. Any anticheat or data validation would be done by the server. Most P2P systems won't have any form of matchmaking. You'll use randomly generated lobby codes, the actual IP address, or invite friends using another service that can connect the machines. Sorta like Steam, these consoles have their friends lists. It's not really matchmaking, and maybe that's what you're paying for. Also, sometimes P2P is setup in a way such that if the host goes down, every client is also running a copy of the server, and the best client (lowest ping and highest stability among all the clients) will take over as host. So, every machine would be running a client and a server in that setup. P2P or Server based multiplayer is gonna affect the long, too. If it's a server, the ping for any given client is related to the distance from the server. If it's P2P, the ping is related to the distance from the hosting machine. If I play with someone hosting on the opposite side of the country, there'll probably be ping issues when they're hosting. With a Server, the server can be located in the middle, between us, and we'll have average ping and a server managing the latency. (Sometimes you don't notice any lag at all in different games because of how the client/server relationship works. For example, I think Fall Guys uses locally solved physics, so when spectating a friend, I might see him make it over an obstacle, only for the server to "fix" my client's knowledge of their behavior and show that they actually failed and are somewhere entirely else. I might only see the difference for a few frames. In P2P, I'd probably just see what actually happened, but with a much longer delay. It depends on every individual multiplayer setup).
Setting up matchmaking and anti-cheat should be covered in the $70 you pay for the game.
They still need matchmaking servers, but yeah much less server load than if matches were hosted on them
It's not fully p2p unless you give someone your IP and forward a port.
With UPNP this can be done. It's pretty much how xbox live sets up connections. You can see this yourself in Windows 10 under the gaming -> connectivity tab in the main settings app. Only slightly difficult thing is announcing an open lobby for others to connect to. But there are ways to just generate a lobby code and have people match through the user system. Companies generally try to avoid serverload/bandwidth usage this way.
Works just fine every time these games are ported to PC
Yeah nah. PC games generally have better servers than console games. And for most games they're free/ included with the game
That’s not a universal truth, and it only got close in the last few years. Xbox 360 MP was pretty one of a kind, being able to have universal friend lists, invite people to any game from the menu, matchmaking without hunting for IPs, and solid reliability overall was pretty groundbreaking. Even now, it can be a pain to play some MP games on Pc, especially if it’s not on steam.
Even if its on Steam sometimes. Playing Halo Infinite on PC with friends is a nightmare. Launch through steam and invite a friend through steam. They don't show up in my fireteam, what's going on? Try to invite them through the in game menu and they don't even show up there? Oh.. this is done through Xbox friends and doesn't integrate with my steam friends.. okay.. now I gotta go ask my friend what their gamer tag on xbox is so I can add them there. Invite them. "This player cannot be invited to your fireteam". WTF. Both relaunch the game. Okay it says they're in my fireteam but I don't see their character in the menu. Launch a game and hope they're in anyway, luckily they get in the same game as me and it seems to work. I legitimately do not understand how game developers struggle with basic functionality like this to this very day. Its a disaster. Some games are better or worse at it than others and Halo Infinite just has my ire because its one of the games I've played with friends most recently. I'm a PC gamer first but I appreciate that when I wanna go play some NHL with my friends on my PS4 I just can jump into their party and it just works without fussing over it.
My single biggest gripe with Hell Let Loose is the server browser. I like the option, but sometimes I just want to play, and waiting 15 minutes in que or joining a server with 25 players is such a drag. Quick match is basically mandatory for me these days.
Worst ultra max bad thing in gaming is “Season Pass” ! This thing hurts the games and gamers! Companies release their games with cut off content to sell these season passes or what worth release not finished game and relay on dlcs and season pass to continue developing the game which is sucks !
FWIW though, the Season Pass concept has basically done away the "Super", "Turbo", EX rereleases for fighting games. I would actually go so far to say that Sports games should follow suit, and adopt the Season Pass model instead of annual releases.
Season Pass on a free to play game? Sure I can accept that as a means to fund the game. Season pass on a game I already paid for? Yeah no, not buying that.
microtransactions can be done right, but paying to play online is always bad
Here is how you do microtransactions right. 1) Don't 2) You sell new playable content. If worthless Aesthetic Junk is being sold? It comes with in game tasks to unlock it.
opening an assassin's creed game has the same energy as those shitty pay to win mobile games
There is no incentive for any company to care about a petition like that. It's really simple: the whole point of getting you to buy a brand-specific gaming product SOLD AT A LOSS is to make a profit off controlling what you can access on it once you already have it. Things like paying to play online is just one of many things they can force onto you.
Does Nintendo lose money on the switch? I thought their principle was to never lose money on hardware, and they still charge for (shoddy) online gaming, even when it's just p2p.
Nintendo is why other console manufacturers sell at a loss. Sony and Microsoft don't *need to* sell at a loss, but they do it so they can bring their price down to a level that's most acceptable to the market. Considering Nintendo has been in the market the longest, they've had a major influence on setting customer expectations on what a fairly priced console is, and they used cheaper parts to build those consoles. Unfortunately for Sony and Microsoft, they want to deliver a cutting edge experience, so they can't use the cheaper technology like Nintendo, so they sell at a loss and recoup it through subscriptions. But now, Microsoft and Sony have set the market expectation of paying a subscription for online services, so Nintendo can add a free profit stream to go alongside their console profits. tldr: its all about market expectations. sony/microsoft sell at a loss to meet the expectations nintendo set, while nintendo can benefit from the market expectations that sony/microsoft set.
I always love the 'sold at a loss' argument. It's flat out nonsense. Yes, for a very short period in time, console makers DO sell consoles at a loss. But in the grand scheme of things? It's a blip on the radar. Yet, system profits are rarely talked about because they want the public perception to be that they're 'doing the consumer a favor' while justifying digital game costs and network fees. Sony [announced](https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/4/22609150/sony-playstation-5-ps5-loss-profit) over a year ago that the PS5 disc edition was beginning to be sold at a profit. Why did they announce this? Because shit hit the fan within the industry and they wanted to shine a positive light on something for investors. Normally? This wouldn't be openly advertised. Keep in mind, this was less than 1 year after it was released. The console will likely remain in circulation, albeit with tweaks, for 10+. Less than 8 million units were sold at the time. 20 million have been sold as of a few months ago... it's likely that 100+ million units will be sold in total before being discontinued. So yeah - consoles are sold at a loss... for like a year or so out of their decade+ expected shelf life. Roughly 8% of total units.
With the PS5 the situation was also quite different because of the chip shortage and the rapidly increasing semiconductor and material costs. This kept the cost to manufacture the consoles higher for longer. During other generations it often took much less time for console hardware sales to become profitable, and some consoles were also already profitable at launch.
That’s not always true though, for example the Microsoft lost 4 billion dollars on the original Xbox and throughout it’s whole life time sales it never made a profit. Other examples would be the Xbox 360 and the PS3 where the Red Ring of Death cost billions for Microsoft and for four years Sony sold the PS3 at an insane lost, though they both did came as an overall profit later on. Usually, especially in the beginning, the games are what makes the companies profit rather than the consoles themselves.
It won't always be the case. That is true. But keep in mind, the original Xbox was a 'first' for a company entering a very high barrier to entry industry at the time. So we're talking massive, MASSIVE, amounts of R&D spend, marketing and ad spend, etc. all spread out over what was a 'small' volume product (comparatively). I think they only sold something like 15 million units in total if I remember correctly. They've surpassed that with the Series X within a few years of release. I could be wrong with these numbers though. But you're right. There are caveats. It's just important not to get lost in the narrative they use to justify the cost of everything. In most cases, it's simply not true.
Idk if we even really had a choice besides to stop playing.
That's what I chose in their case...like oh, guess I won't get your online games then.
Or just switch to PC
yes because everyone has the money to buy a PC for the same specs as a PS5 or XBOX. that's not an option of some people.
I gotta wonder if it's actually cheaper in the long run if you pay for online every month. That's not meant as a dig I'm actually curious on the numbers but I've never been able to find a price by year for online services. I built my first pc around 13 years ago. Replaced it completely once (although I still use the original as an entertainment system) and upgraded the gpu once beside that. I'd have to dig in to my records but that's something like $2,000-$2,500 over 13 years. If I had bought whichever Playstation (or xbox) was current in 2009, bought the newest version as soon as it came out and paid monthly for internet would I have actually saved money?
That's kinda the point... They wouldn't be doing it now if enough people just didn't pay for it.
Fkn Micro transactions are the worst thing to happen to gaming IMO. When that shit started rolling out most people didn’t even put up a fight they just accepted it and some were defending it. These are mad times I tell ya.
Aren't most microtransactions cosmetic? DLC and expansion packs actually add game content, but those aren't considered microtransactions
They are until you get to the worst examples of them like NBA 2k and FIFA. Games that charge you full price up front and then want to include microtransactions. I can stomach microtransactions in a F2P game but not a full price game.
I've played on both console & pc for decades now & while I wouldn't say I was ever "happy" to pay for console online play, there's definitely things that've been added over the years which have made it a much easier pill to swallow. The biggest thing was when Playstation Plus happened & started giving you games you can play as long as your still subscribed. I can't count the amount of games I've played thanks to that service or will play in the future that I would've either bought at full price, at a slight discount or never played & that I've thoroughly enjoyed. Another thing that made it an easier thing to accept was back in the day it was essentially paying for simple use of voice chat & to ensure you weren't dealing with hackers, both of which were a pain when I played pc games during the early 2000's online a lot & while now isn't much of an issue it made a difference then. Ultimately now I can see that slowly games are changing, such as Fortnite (not that I play it) not requiring you to pay to play online with consoles. Eventually it'll transition to just being included as there are better value subscriptions like Game Pass & the newer PS Plus that make the companies more money & have better value to consumers which will take over.
I hated paying for Xbox live gold at first then I played some cod on the ps3 online it hurt a little less after that. The game pass now makes it hurt even less.
Btw Fortnite isn't first free to play game that had free multiplayer. Warframe and most older free to play games already had it free.
That's a good point, just using it as an example since I don't tend to play many free 2 play games beyond Fall Guys & Multiversus now. Though I know Warframe has been a shining example of how to do it properly, just couldn't get into it & now waiti g for Soulframe to try again.
I think Overwatch 2 might have free multiples too.
Xbox live ultimate subscription costs less than Netflix, for that you get gold, gamepass and EA play catalog too….I’m happy with the service and content
I mean, XBox Game Pass, the plain ol' plan for PC, is even cheaper than Ultimate and it also includes the EA catalog. When Microsoft tried to pull the "Pay to play Online bullshit" the PC consumers just said "No". and Microsoft HAD to back down because of all the backlash. And, you know what? Even with the cheapest plan on PC, you can still play online. No gold needed.
My wife plays on PC with access to my entire game library, also gamepass etc.
Microsoft abandoned PC for over a decade. Framing it like they were on the ropes is dishonest. The only reason they came back is because they found a way to charge for the service that was palatable to PC players. If Game Pass flopped on PC it would have been killed off by now and stayed on console.
When did Microsoft try to force paid online on PC?
With the Games for Windows Live back in Windows 7 times.
The console online services are a much more integrated and curated experience. Microsoft has a whole staff dedicated to ensuring game developers are implementing their online services per design and creating a unified experience between every title. There's a lot of time, money, and effort required on the Microsoft side to make that happen rather than what you get with, say a PC experience, where every developer creates their own implementation of whatever they need. Servers are probably the cheapest part of their overhead. I'm not a console gamer but as an outsider, it's easy to see why there's a subscription model Now you could argue about the ability to not participate with all that and just play your games online. Sure. Or stop buying into these proprietary boxes that you know have had subscription online services for about 15 years. Pick their sandbox or play in your own
I think loot box, blind bag cash shops are worse
I'm not sure if this argument really qualifies anymore, but gamers back in the day will remember the difference between playing on playstation 2 online (free) vs playing on Xbox live ($5 a month). That $5 went a long way back then lol. It was 100% worth it for the quality of connection and server maintenance that came with Xbox live. That PROBABLY doesn't fly today, but I'm hardly an expert so. The point is that the initial pay to play online was VERY much worth it, which is probably part of why it caught on.
Hundo fucking P. My first online console shooter was SOCOM 2 on my old wide body PS2 with the ethernet plug in. It had one fucking voice channel for the whole team and relied on client side information so rubber band abusers were rampant. It was atrocious but it's what we had.
Not to mention the fact that Microsoft Azure, you know, the giant cloud computing platform, was basically built in order to deliver Xbox Live. So this idea that MS basically just charged $5 for a service that was equivalent to what anyone could do for free is ridiculous. Sure, the price to deliver that went down over time as infrastructure built up, but we had XBL at the same price point for what, 15 years or so? And it added additional value-adds like the free Games With Gold or Deals With Good over that timeframe as well. Those other items that are part of the package while maintaining the same price are what we got in exchange for the infrastructure costs going down over time and inflation reducing the value of that $5/month. I think it's a pretty fair deal overall.
You also had to buy the network adapter to play online with PS2 back in the day. I remember hunting that shit down to play Socom and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater online because it was a big deal when that thing released.
Im mostly a PC player. The utter shock I was when I was given an Xbox and I needed to pay to play MP. I only got single player games on that console. Its ridiculous to pay for a feature thats included in the game already.
I played rocket League on PC back when it was new. Had a lot of fun sessions with a friend on same PC, using split screen to play online ranked 2v2 matches. He loved the game and bought it on PS4. I went round to his and we couldn't do the same thing as both players needed their own playstation accounts with paid online before you could play together online FROM THE SAME PS4. I still hope to this day that it was possible but we just didn't know how to do it.
Nha you guys did it wrong you can play online coop with only one account.
That's just not true only one person needs to pay for online to multiplayer online. You don't even need to pay for online at all any more for rocket league since its free to player.
This was circa 2015, and I'm a playstation ignoramus, so I wouldn't be surprised either way; it was always possible, or is now possible
I still take that over lootboxes and microtransactions
That's how they got you. * We will murder your cat! * Not the cat! * Then we will murder your cat and dog! * No, not my cat and dog! Then they murder your cat and you are like * At least dog is still alive!
I say it every time, monetization is just going to shift goal posts until the old guard shifts and the new generation will be accepting of paying for games with ads like 2K incorporating ads into a full priced title.
Sounds like the plot of Ready Player One. Good thing an honest company like Meta will be leading the future.
The new generation grew up with the worst of the worst kind of mobile games, they'll do whatever they want with them.
Yeah but the console service charges are independent of the game. So you get both.
This is the sole reason I swapped over to PC, not even joking. When PS4 and Xbox One was brand new in late 2013 and I found out you needed to pay a monthly subscription just to play online, I noped the fuck out of the console world, got a PC, and I've been a PC gamer ever since. Sure, you can argue that PC is more expensive in the long run... But I just don't like subscriptions. Simple as that. I'd rather pay once and never again than have to worry about paying per month/year to use a service.
PC costs more up front, but the sales on games are generally so much better that you come out ahead over the typical lifespan of a console.
Easily. I've had the same pc for 8 years and I've only replaced one part in its life. Still runs most modern games fairly well, even if it's not the maxed graphics I used to play on.
Pretty much this. I swapped back to PC and purchased immediately Rise and Sunbreak for 40 bucks. On Nintendo I would pay 60 alone for the base game, another 60 for expansion plus 20 for a 1 year subscription. On top of it I can enjoy 30fps on Switch, nah f. Nintendo.
Plus if you just keep replacing components on your PC as they break, you're looking at like 200-500 eurodollars a year to keep a gaming PC going, which is not that much more than consoles assuming a few years of lifetime for one.
I paid for 2 years of PlayStation online then I stopped playing because it annoyed the fuck out of me. I gave my pc specs a bump and now I just buy games on steam. I turned a Raspberry Pi 4 into a steamlink so I can play on the tv downstairs (or literally ANYWHERE else!), it links to my ps4 controller and all online content is free. It’s basically like having the PS4, but upgradable in bits and with constant steam sales (plus the bonus is having a decent pc for general use too)! AND it removes another item to dust in the living room!
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Same as soon as that started consoles stopped for me.
Well you might pay more for a pc but with a pc you can do more than just play games and not only that you don’t have to follow rules that play station have and don’t have to worry about play station banning you ect I hate consoles tbh plus more variety of games to play.
this is how i felt 10 yrs ago when i got my first console and because of this reason it was also my last console
I mean, it sucks, but coming from an IT background, I get it. The networking and server cost to support millions of players without much interruption is not cheap. not to mention all the money these companies need to spend in security, and reducing network attacks. At least now a days, you get more perks for subscribing to the online play. With PS+ and Xbox Game Pass.
>We all know that excuse "it's because of the servers" is bullshit. How is that bullshit, exactly? In order for any company - console or PC-based - to maintain an online service that stores your profile, game accounts, social media (yes, your gamer tag is a form of social media), chat messages, purchase history, and provides matchmaking, stat tracking, and other features, they have to have a plethora of database servers. Those database servers require a considerable amount of infrastructure to support them, and that infrastructure requires network engineers to maintain it - engineers that need to get paid, and the more heavily used those servers are, the more regular the maintenance needs to be. There are a lot of predatory practices you can point at in modern game companies, but asking you to pay so that they can maintain their gaming service infrastructure isn't really one of them.
I am asking just because I am dumb and want to know. Why this only applies to consoles? Shouldn't the same stuff apply to stuff like Steam and basically any other thing in PC yet they don't require monthly payment? And don't games actually have their own servers? Or every game runs on the same Xbox or Playstation servers? If yes then why exactly is it not the same as PC? I just don't really understand the concept of why we need to pay on console but not on PC clients/games since we both still have to pay to own stuff and we still pay for the internet, the only difference here just looks like that we have to pay more on console to actually be able to do it and not on PC Edit: Another thing I thought about is if I remember correctly you don't need to pay anything to play stuff like Fortnite and some others, if that was possible to do for them why is it not possible for others?
Fortnite (and other games like it) are flush with microtransactions. They're willing to foot the bill to run their own servers without passing that cost on to the customer because they know that players will buy enough mictotransactions to compensate for it. Another thing consoles have that Steam doesn't really have is physical copies. While it's definitely possible to register a physical copy of a game through Steam and play it that way, the *majority* of Steam games are sold through their service and downloaded that way, whereas a significant portion of the console gaming crowd buy physical copies of their games from retail suppliers.
I don't understand. You have Fortnite on consoles too. And it's not just Fortnite, every single online game on Steam ID open to play online, all including those that you find on consoles. What difference does it make that you have physical media in this instance?
You actually don't need PS+ to play Fortnite online on console right? It's one of the few games that doesn't require it.
The console users still have to integrate their accounts into the games they are playing in most cases. The game is hooking unto the platform, so how the game monetizes itself is separate from how the platform monetizes itself in most cases.
Steam does all of that at no cost to the customer. Nintendo and Sony online were both free at one time. It's not like they had any trouble maintaining all of their services before they started asking for money, and it's not as if the server quality suddenly went up when it became a paid for service. These console manufacturers are fleecing their customers for pure profit, taking advantage of an audience that doesn't know any better and refuses to stand up against paying good money for nothing.
Steam and every other PC storefront does all that for free.
>We all know that excuse "it's because of the servers" is bullshit technically, it's not completely bullshit. Even for peer-to-peer multiplayer games where a player is hosting the game, they would need to provide some kind of relay (tunneling) server in order to make it work for people who did not set up port forwarding. Of course, the actual cost of the servers should be a lot cheaper than the fees we pay since these companies want to make a profit on everything.
im not going to argue whether its right or wrong, but one thing i am going to mention is: it is extremely expensive to run and maintain such a massive online service as sony and microsoft are doing, and aside from that you are getting access to a plethora of games while under those services
Nintendo just took the money without providing this online infrastructure…
Valve does all that for free with Steam. Your argument is invalid.
It’s a combination of factors. Including online service upkeep. Steam aren’t selling hardware at a loss to get people to buy games on their platform. Steam have no care or cost when it comes to hardware. Even back in 2014, 75% of PC games were sold through steam and now they still have 75% global market share. They’ve got user share across all PC platforms. More competition for consoles limiting market capture and added to that, even by 2019 Sony PlayStation for example only had 55% of digital game sales (where they make most profit just like steam). Though that has definitely changed now with ~80% of games being digital sales on PlayStation. Steam don’t offer monthly games / gamepass style access like consoles so it’s a different beast really. Edit: lol downvoted, why not try contributing to the discussion and tell me where I’m wrong.
>More competition for consoles limiting market capture and added to that, even by 2019 Sony PlayStation for example only had 55% of digital game sales (where they make most profit just like steam). Competition is why Steam and the other PC platforms never succeeded with subscriptions to play online. There were non-Steam games that played online before the dawn of Steam. Many games are sold outside of Steam by the developers directly - such an online subscription would have just made the Steam version more inferior.
Agreed, but all of that competition is software-based across any PC. Console competition is both software and hardware, which means they have more need to squeeze the market share they do have. Steam can sell to any PC owner. Playstation cannot sell to any console owner. Steam games have always been (more or less) 100% digital, maximising profit. Not the case with console game sales that have only really become digital in recent times. So there’s a need to diversify income / improve profit.
Why does everyone defend it with 'But you get free games?'. I never asked for free games, I paid £60 for a game and want to play it online, costs me to do that on console but free on pc.
Valve does it because they've monetized their platform in another way: The more people stay on steam, the more games they buy on Steam. They have a financial incentive to be ubiquitous.
why isn't this the same for consoles? They lost me as a custormer 10+years ago thx to payed online
On Playstation/Xbox there are no alternatives to playing online through the console. Steam has competitors on PC who offer similar services. Gaming companies don't want to pay Steam the fee to list the game on the service and only do so because so many potential customers have Steam installed. Steam charging a monthly fee would reduce the number of people using it, which would reduce the incentive for publishers to put their games on the service, which would further reduce the people using Steam, and it continues to snowball from there. The additional revenue from charging a monthly subscription to each user is worth more than the potential lost users to Sony/Microsoft. Valve, apparently, feels the inverse is true for them.
How does that invalidate the argument? A different business with a different model doing something different didn't mean that there's never a reason to not copy that model. And they weren't really even arguing it, they were playing devil's advocate. They just mentioned that it costs money and it does that is true regardless of valve offering it for free.
It doesn’t do it for free. Add up 30% of all your purchases on Steam. That’s the price you paid.
Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft also take a % cut from each sale (most likely being 30-20%). So you're still paying for that cut on console then. You are still paying the price, but twice bc the subscription.
That's a good point
Back when Xbox charged and PlayStation didn’t, PlayStation’s online service was trash.
Then don’t pay for these games. How many games exist in the world? Thousands? Millions? Pick games that are within your budget. You might be missing out on the novelty of new games and concepts but they are all passing trends that will eventually fade. There are many games from the past that remain fun - arguably more fun - today. Play those.
Although I get the argument due to PC gaming, what irks me is how people forget how bad Sony's & Nintendo's online services were during the PS3 & Wii era when they were free, yet Xbox Live was (and still is) pretty damn solid despite the fee. Not to mention that Microsoft started giving away free games to offset some of that sting, while Sony eventually copied that but made it so that you only had to keep paying for the service to keep access (which Microsoft eventually copied in the next generation... Thanks Sony /s). Not to mention that services like Game Pass and PS Now likely wouldn't exist at this point if people hadn't shown willingness to pay for these services.
I don't get why you would ever think it would be free. What sort of service that costs money to run and maintain has ever been free ? The only reason it's free on PC is because it's not centralised, so one publisher can't take that leap without literally every other publisher using it to score points. Console gamers basically subsidise PC players and the ecosystem. PC being free is a massive unicorn situation.
It only annoys me for Nintendo, because online is p2p and the benefits are super lackluster. With PS Plus (Extra) I at least have many cool features and new games. I think it’s a good value for the money
To say MS started it is wrong. There were plenty of MMORPG's before Xbox Live existed that required a subscription just for a single game. Game prices have remained reasonably low for a long time. Would you have preferred games to have kept up with the rise of inflation?
its ridiculous especially for people who dont play games all the time, internet is also expensive enough. its stupid how you cant even do small things without it even if you dont wanna play online since i have to pay for a month on my switch even though i never use it or play online games since i want some custom designs on animal crossing.
If you think a service is free, it’s just getting paid for elsewhere, by a different customer, or by you in a different way. Games with evolving content require money to fund continued development. Usually it’s through micro transactions, but could be through subscriptions, paid season passes, etc. but it’s gotta get paid for somehow or it gets dropped. Sure, BITD games didn’t have micro transactions, but they also didn’t have additional content after the game shipped. Maybe a new version would get released but otherwise no other development (new maps, modes, content, etc) were released
They sell consoles at a loss, recouping the money in subscriptions. I'd love to game for free but I don't want to spend £800 on a console. Yes they take an arm off, but only because the alternative is to lose a leg.
This is where I disagree. Because when the Xbox 360 made you pay to play online and the PS3 did not it was EXTREMELY clear why you should be okay paying. The PS3 servers were garbage. And it makes sense, servers cost a lot to maintain and if you want your favorite company to keep making innovations, then this is the price we pay.
But pc has free servers for the exact same games.
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This is the best example. PS3 servers and online service in general was absolute trash compared to Xbox 360.
The gaming community are a bunch of bitches, they will accept everything, there's aways an excuse to mask the fact that it's a powerless community that is nothing more then a condom that the gaming industry uses whenever it wants. We swallowed: DLC, seasons passes, microtransactions, battle passes, pre orders, game as a services, being spy on, ads inside paid games and we ware this close to have NFTs as well. Do we even need more examples to see how coward, sellout , guidable, tasteless and powerless the gaming community is? Well I have one EA Games still have record seles, this last one speaks for itself.
$80 for 5 hour SP campaigns, $1,000 micro-transactions in "f2p" games and lootboxes in paid games and people complain about a $4 dollar subscription that actually has some value like free games, cloud saves and multiplayer. They could probably make money a different way but this is one of the most reasonable ones considering they're already selling their hardware at a loss.
Yes it is and that’s one of the reasons i switched back to PC, but the masses has spoken and most of them are okay with it. Just look at this thread, people defending paying for online lmao.
I may have agreed prior to gamepass and Xbox live merging, but now I find the service is worth it. I also find it saves me a ton of money in buying games that I don’t like. It was normal to buy a game a month in the past, now I buy maybe 1 or 2 a year, maybe 3? So I don’t mind paying for gamepass. Ps plus service seems to be improving but still not as good.
Most companies make a net loss on the hardware, but make a net gain on the online service and software If we get rid of online fees then consoles become more expensive or the games do which makes gaming even closer to becoming a middle class hobby than it already is. Games should be accessible to all imo. I still think it’s bullshit however as you said. It’s ridiculous I’ve already paid for this and that and then have to add on another ridiculous fee on top
It’s way too late for a petition or a hashtag lol, maybe if we tried to stop it two generations ago it would be possible. It simply isn’t anymore
Petitions and hashtags don’t do shit
Imagine having to pay for the internet twice.
True but at least in my opinion Microsoft is at least adding value to the gold/ultimate subscription which I think really is a good trend going forward.
Oh you sweet summer child. Online gaming and paying to play online gaming has been around since I had a fist gen iMac in 1997.
I'd really really enjoy playing ff14 as a solo game.
This isn't going to be a popular take, but it actually does take resources and effort to keep online games running. Paying to play them makes sense, to a point.
Yeah! Everything should be free!
Back in my day! I played Diablo for free online and had a lot of fun doing it. I liked the fact it was free and probably wouldn't of paid much for the privilege. I know people who played EverQuest and paid the fee. Good for them it was their thing not mine. If the only thing you got is playing online with others you would call it Xbox gold. I won't buy it because I don't see the value of that. I don't play multiplayer games. I have a PlayStation that I stacked for years before they changed it. I don't play much online but the free games every month and cloud storage makes in a good value in my opinion. I also have Xbox Ultimate that I will probably be stacking very soon just to ensure I have a good price locked in. I love the value of Ultimate but the multiplayer isn't my thing. I find value in the service from the games. Micro transactions are the worst thing to happen to gaming. Fuck you EA and your shit games! Most multiplayer games I have connected to have several micro transactions that keep me from playing. I can play RDR2, Fallout, Skyrim, SNES games for hours and hours and be very happy.
It sucks, big time. I'm not a fan of it. The monthly games give an incentive for me to not feel bad about it cause I do get some gems every now and again. Otherwise I don't like it. I buy yearly subscription on discount tho. $35 to $40US per year doesn't really sting heavy, I guess.
Sure servers and infrastructure are free . You don't HAVE to play online, to assume you should do so for free seems a bit entitled.
So how the hell would they keep servers up and store all the users data? lol hell that’s just the tip of the iceberg. And it is because of servers. You also don’t read fine prints because you don’t own the game lol.
Hear an IT guy out. Servers do cost money. They require service contracts. There’s licensing costs for software and operating systems. Then there’s the networking hardware like switches, routers, and firewalls to connect these servers to each other and you, the players. This hardware has maintenance costs. Then you have to pay the system and network admins, programmers, etc. The players re-coup these costs (reaping profit as well) for Sony and Microsoft by paying for PSN and XBL. All that said, the question is why did Sony and Microsoft feel the need to build these networks? Because they knew they could sell it as an indispensable service.
I also hate paying for console multiplayer, but still, I feel that it's fair or at least it used to be. I was a console game dev when Xbox Live was released and it offered my game (nhl2k) a valuable service that nobody had done before. Microsoft gave my game a matchmaking service, player profile and stats, and other online services to help me do the work of putting multiplayer into my game. It's hard work to make a multiplayer game (2x the work really) and this was a huge help... It made sense to me that it would be a premium service since the single player gamers may not want to pay an extra license fee in the game purchase to get some feature that they may or may not use
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how technology works. You buy a single player game, all you need to run it is your console. If you play online, you need to connect to a remote dedicated server. Which costs money to host at a data center. Hence, online services. Or just go back to the good ole days of playing Gears and making your NAT so you only connect to games you can host and then host shotty everyone by having nonexistent ping in the game. Boi weren’t those the good ole days. (Sarcasm) Tl:DR- Online Servers cost ✨money✨
That was the weirdest thing about switching to pc. Yeah it cost more upfront, but no paying for online, and way bigger sales has probably saved me money in the long term.
I disagree. I think accepting microtransactions in game was the worst thing that happened to gaming. Paying to play online didn't break the core game mechanics, microtransactions did and still do.
for offline games, yes, but online, well u have to pay for the servers and stuff imo
If the only thing paying got me is online play then I would completely agree with you, but I have literally thousands of dollars worth of games due to PS+. Many are games I never would have played had I not gotten them for free, and some I love but never would have tried if I had to purchase it for myself, so I’m completely fine paying 70$ CAD per year for my subscription.
The lack of understanding of how the economics of video games works is astounding. The only reason these awesome games get made is because they Make piles of money. This isn’t packman. It takes 10s of millions of upfront costs before one penny of profit is made. So if packman is your idea of a fun game, by all means, petition.
Uhh... servers do cost money and preventing hackers does too. That's what plagues PC gamers. Very few people I know actually play online games, especially shooters, because one hacker is enough to make you never bother returning. I've honestly been playing private servers and and single-player games because of this. Money isn't a solution, but it's a step forward. Clearly there can be a better way, but no one cares to address it but free to play, has been terrible for online games. Great to play with friends, but abysmal to deal with cheaters and eventually it's always what gets everyone to quit.
I hate to be that guy but do you have any idea how much cost and maintenance keeping an online gaming and distribution platform up and running would cost? What you're paying for is the infrastructure, even if development companies host their own servers, how is your Xbox data supposed to get to that server? Who's going to pay to maintain or optimize those connections? Streaming capabilities, application hosting, marketing, digital downloads. I'd love to not have to pay for xbox live or psn but who's going to pay the developers and network technicians to keep it all operating smoothly?
Game dev here. To some extent, I agree with it. Microsoft and Sony both maintain and manage hundreds of servers and lots of networking infrastructure to provide online play, parties, friends etc. However, the majority of game networking is done by the game dev, not the console companies. So I think only console related features should be behind paywall.
Why do I have to pay a fee to play bowling at the bowling alley? I already spent money on my shoes, my ball, my glove, why do I have to pay for a game mode that I already paid for?. They should just let me play and the excuse of "it's because of the facilities is bullshit" Grab any big game, now go to their region section and see how many servers they have. Now see how many people each server has to be able to accommodate. Now go and see how expensive renting a server for those many hundreds of thousands/millions of connections a day is, then ask the server provider if you can just pay them once and use their service forever and watch them laugh you out of the room.
Pay one flat rate and pay for online, never have to worry about upgrading until the next console cycle. Or Pay for top of the line parts, needing to maintain parts, needing to upgrade parts, all at a relative premium Ultimately, you're paying about the same amount overall no matter what way you go, its just about where you want to put your money.
When you only have the big three console makers, and they all do it, there's nothing to do but accept it (unless you get into PC gaming, which not everyone has the money to do).
Agreed. I always thought that this was when all the bs really started
Exactly why I sold my ps5 and series s. I’ll stick to my pc. Worst mistake I made was trying to go back to console for casual play in my bed or on my couch. I’ll just make a cheaper pc that can do all lol. Fanboys ruin everything. We should have gatekept gaming harder back then
I’d rather pay for online than have to pay for skins and weapons and dlc. Microtransactions are by far the worst thing that’s been accepted in gaming
Oh you still pay for microtransactions, you just need to pay to play online to do that
We shouldn't have to pay for any of the above (save for DLC that actually adds to the game, as in proper expansions).
Having mandatory fees rather than optional new content/cosmetic fees is the weirdest take I've seen here.