Re: Why won't they make X-box Live free?
 

i agree with killer kyle, microsoft wants to make money...

Re: Why won't they make X-box Live free?
 

I'm no expert on the prices in the US but isn't the cost per month something like $3-4? That's a far cry from $15 per month. To be blunt I quite simply refuse to believe that at that price it's out of reach for someone who can afford over $700 in console hardware (which could quite easily rise to the region of $1000 if you've got the versions with larger hard drives etc).

You've made the rational choice not to buy it because the benefit to you doesn't outweigh the cost. Your money, your choice. It's not Microsoft excluding you.

Re: Why won't they make X-box Live free?
 

Actually, I own a 360 and did before I owned a PS3 and had Live for a while, but it didn't change my views about it's unfair fee.

Honestly, the core multiplayer vs. PS3 is no different. I agree that the PS3 costs more, but you get more for free.

There are problems with the PS3 (hardware and software architecture for one), but I'm willing to deal with that for a cheaper online experience that is on par with Live. If Microsoft removed half of the bells and whistles of Live, they could make it free but probably not drop some of their unnecessary market charges.

Re: Why won't they make X-box Live free?
 

i still dont get why your complaing as you have the money to spend on a ps3 after you brought a 360 but cant afford £30 for a years online dont make sense to me

Re: Why won't they make X-box Live free?
 

Because I'm a graduate student, and I make a less than minimum-wage salary to work almost every day of the year (excluding Christmas, Spring, and Fall Break). So, at that rate, a fee does count when I can't spend but 1% of my subscription time to actually play online. That's 99% of my subscription time and money wasted, and that's where I get pissed.

Why can't Microsoft do what Nintendo did and what Sony never had to do and remove their online multiplayer fee? This is what this thread is about.

The PS3 and 360s were gifts from my parents, by the way.

Re: Why won't they make X-box Live free?
 

that makes sense now then im a student at college at the moment and i dont really have any money and cant afford a ps3 due to the intial expense.

id love to have live as free but there is not much we can do about that

Re: Why won't they make X-box Live free?
 

One you have a 360 you can't be that poor. 2 It's all about money and yeah it's so bad that we get an organized place to download movies, games, music, and EXCLUSIVE DOWN LOADABLE CONTENT that Microsoft gets for us. Stop whining cause it won't happen. I've been XBL since the beginning and guess what i use to have to use my lunch money for school until i got a job. Two weeks of not eating garbage lunch to get that? i like it. then i got a job and man is it easy. SO all in all Microsoft knows what they are doing not you. And if you quit because it isn't then you'll just be like the others. Microsoft = money smart. They make money years after the console is released. If you bought one game and got the 360 for 400 and have live for 3 years you'll have spent $610 meaning that they are playing the economy smart. PS3 500+ games. If they stop buying games because theres a really good one then ps3 is losing money again. God Microsoft probally has milked over 5000+ dollars from me worth of games, DLC, XBox, and 360

Re: Why won't they make X-box Live free?
 

I sure hope you meant to say Live.

id love to have live as free but there is not much we can do about that


And I pretty much will because I don't give a damn anymore. I have the right to vent, but I can't win.

You don't have my job. You'd want to quit in an instant. I'm trying to hang onto it by as much as I can. This is not part of the argument, though.

Microsoft =/= Quality. They put out an OS (Vista) that gained an awful reputation for incompatibility and a console (360) with a 1/3 fail rate. A lot of things with fail rates that high would be recalled, but I know that wouldn't be smart. They should have built it better before shoving it out of the door, but, hey, gotta make money.

They also used the hype tactic with Halo 2 and 3 to make some money, and that actually pushed their net console income out of the red. Hey, it worked on me. Unfortunately, both of the single player games didn't live up to the hype. Who cares, though? The multiplayer was great and they raked in money and Live subscribers.

Finally, and I'm not sure of this name, but it's proprietary products. Basically, they're going to create games that will only play on Vista. Notice that this is already taking place with the 360. For a PS3, you can actually use any SATA RAID laptop hard drive for the game hard drive and any flash storage device as a memory card. Sure, you may not ever use that, but it's there. But if you want a 360 memory card or hard drive, you have to buy a 360-compatible one, and because nothing else fits the 360, Microsoft can set the price to anything withing reasonable limits.

Microsoft will always make money, but they stopped caring about the people by putting out products of lower quality. That's going to bite them in the ass soon enough.

To be fair, this is what I like about the 360:
In game messaging.
It's easier to set up player-to-player chat.
PS3 lacks any real great games at the moment, but I haven't played all of the PS3 games. Too many PS3 games are multi-platform. This may be due to the PS3 architecture being too complicated at the moment. This also makes creating games on the 360 more desirable.

The PS3 will shine soon enough. The 360 is doing well besides it's astromically higher than the other consoles fail rate, but it could do a lot better if Microsoft took the time to design their console well. If they had taken more time to make Live Silver a little more fair and not a teaser product, then I wouldn't be having this conversation right now, but, hey you gotta make money.

I'm done ranting now. I just wanted to express my point, but I know what I want isn't going to happen even if Microsoft possibly could afford it.

Think of this before I go: What's better? Free candy or $5 candy. Think carefully about it.

Re: Why won't they make X-box Live free?
 

Microsoft made the absurd decision to rush out their console in order to gain a footing on the console market. The 30% failure rate seen by 360s is due to the rough edges and poor construction of the system. While the PS3 doesn't really have a large footing in the market, it has an incredibly low fail rate, the technology really can shine and the upcoming games look brilliant (MGS4 anyone?).

Re: Why won't they make X-box Live free?
 

i did mean PS3 as i can afford £30 for the year of gaming thats a small cost instead of another £100 ontop of that for a PS3 as they are really over priced at the time of me buying my 360 that extra 100 is for booze :beer: