Yeah I was CLEARLY mistaken -- when EA "bought into live" 3 years back, I hadn't realized that they still controlled their own login system -- I thought that they had done away with that. That would have prevented them from cutting off live support to their games, since, as I thought I understood it, MS was in charge of running all that. I should have done a little more research before I opened my mouth, and should have thought twice about how much EA wants to bend over people for money.

Nobodies heard of xFire? Thought that was old. I mean, I THOUGHT THAT was OLD.

Yeah, not that old. Maybe 3-4 years old.

It does offer a lot of the same features as Live does, it's probably the closest thing to being as fully-featured and functional on the PC, but it's in-game support isn't that great (lots of alt-tabbing required which resource-intensive games don't like) and it's continued to have a host of bugs and other problems.

It never really caught on anyway. Still around, but I'm not sure if I've ever met a single person that's used it. Steam Community has probably caught on more and faster in a much shorter period of time.

> You can do that NOW on the PC, but that's a pretty recent development

man I was doing that shit 10 years ago on PC

the only (and this is a big only for people) unique thing microsoft has done is pull it all together on a proprietary console that they control and can charge whatever they want for and can make deals with EA so they can cancel online support for their annual games so people are forced into buying new games because their old ones are obsolete

oh yeah live is gr8 d00d

Nobodies heard of xFire? Thought that was old. I mean, I THOUGHT THAT was OLD.

Dev,
I'm a big proponent of Steam. I have probably 25 games on there. But, as popular as it is, it's still only a fraction of the total multi-player gaming going on, though as a percentage of online FPS playing it's probably fairly large (which isn't most of my PC MP, mine tends towards RTS). And even while many people have accounts there, the majority of their gaming isn't done over that service. Me personally, I'd buy every game over it if I could, but fact is that the majority of major PC releases aren't found on Steam.
It doesn't help that many PC gamers don't like Steam. I think they're turning around, the sentiment certainly seems to have eased considerably since it was launched. But there's still a large portion of the population that's hesitant to run it.

Galewind:
Guess you don't own any EA games or bother to read anything about them:
http://www.ea.com/information.jsp
List of all the 06 AND 07 titles ea just canceled online service on in the last couple months, along with a list of previous titles they've canceled online play on.
There's xbox, xbox 360, playstation, and PC in the mix (along with some other gaming platforms).


Mark: While its true that Steam only offers similar features to people who own it, there's a not insignificant amount of people who own a steam game. Remember, half life and half life 2 are the most popular online FPS games in the world for PC. Many times more player on that than any battlefield games for instance.
http://archive.gamespy.com/stats/
Also, the reason you can communicate with anyone on xbox live is because its a common platform. Steam is also a common platform.
If developers take more advantage of steam it might be possible to grow it into something like xbox live as well. Steam is starting to sell many popular new games through its service. Call of Duty 4 for instance came out on steam pretty much the same time it was released in retail box.

This comment was edited on Dec 5, 20:28.

Stuff is starting to cost money that never cost money before because of the sole fact these people are greedy as hell and the consumers don't care or are to stupid to know otherwise (we are talking about console users here)

And you'd have to be stupid to think that the PC EVER had the features or capability in a single program like Live. Stop thinking of it as paying for a particular feature, and think of it as paying for FUNCTIONALITY, something that MP gaming on the PC is woefully lacking in. And always will be.

I was a PC gamer for a VERY long time; started out playing the original text-based games, moved on to some of the original "massively multiplayer" games like WarBirds and Meridian, and still do the majority of my gaming there though I've recently started playing a bit of MP over Xbox Live, but I would NEVER lament MS charging $50 for what is without a doubt a far superior multiplayer interface than the PC has EVER had.

Sure, you can get your "Friends Lists" on AIM, MSN, etc.... but you can't see what, if anything, they're playing. If they are playing a game, you're screwed you can't talk to them AT ALL. And since you can't even see what they're playing you can't even start it up and try to find them on the servers for that particular game, since every game has its' own servers. Microsoft actually tried it with MSN quite a while ago, but it never caught on, simply because MSN wasn't that popular at the time combined with no developers outside of MS' own games would implement any of the features.

Live doesn't offer anything that you can't do on the PC for free, that's true. But it's about a thousand times more convenient and easier to use.

With 3 button presses you can open a live chat with anyone in any game. Try that on a PC. You can't. The best you can hope is that your buddy is on the same TeamSpeak/Ventrilo server as you, but then that means he's not on the same one as the guys he's playing with.

With 3 button presses you can text anyone in any game. Try that on a PC. You can't. Sure, you can text your buddies anytime you want with IM software, but they won't be able to see your message until they quit their game.

Want to play with your buddies? With 2 clicks you can be put right into their game. You can do that NOW on the PC, but that's a pretty recent development and there's still a LOT of PC games where joining a buddies game is still a matter of manually seeking out the name of the game they started (and good luck knowing that without joining a TeamSpeak server beforehand, which is an effort in and of itself).

With Live, EVERY person is playing EVERY game on what is essentially the same server. There's no hunting a buddy down trying to figure out what game they're playing or what "room" they're in (a wonderful feature that many PC games still use for some reason). There's no pre-game setup of the TeamSpeak servers and channel settings and then the subsequent fact that, by doing do you just alienated yourself from everyone else you're playing with or against, since they wouldn't be on the same server -- you could join the in-game voice interaction, but then you'd be alienated from your friends. There's no way to be possibly reached by everyone, you have to choose. Texting while in game is virtually impossible. You can often text within your GAME, but very few games allow texting from a room to a game or vice versa, let alone to someone playing a completely different game.

There is only one piece of software for the PC even coming close to the true features and functionality and that is the new Steam community. But, even then, you're limited to just interacting with friends that are playing over Steam. If they're playing something else, they might as well not even exist; you can't interact with them at all. Unless you happen to have their cell number and can pick up the phone and call them.

There's a reason why, to this very day, I pay $40/month for a personal cell phone. And it is exclusively for multi-player gaming on the PC. It is EXPONENTIALLY easier to just call up my buddies and use a cellphone and a headset to find out if he's playing something tonight, coordinate our games, chat in game, etc. That is literally the only thing I keep a personal cell phone for since my business one would be fine for my otherwise occassional personal use.

This comment was edited on Dec 5, 20:24.

pier to peir connections

Dingies, boats and ships, depending on your bandwidth.

If I was a software developer or publisher, I'd be wickedly pissed off at MS for this. Making people pay for access to someone else's service so that they can access the content that helps you sell your games isn't the way to win the hearts of the people who are using those demos to get their products off the shelf.

Exactly.

What is my main e-mail account? A free Gmail account.

Friends list? Who doesn't offer this these days? Steam, ICQ, AIM, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, etc.

Messaging? See the above.

Stats or matchmaking? See the above.

Free multi-player/matchmaking? See, oh, every PC game out there? I do admit there has been a recent attempt to make people pay for this.....by Microsoft....using Windows Live.....

Web browsing? Past the single charge I pay for my ISP, free (even the asshats that add "perks" for paying customers let me acccess their site for free.)

That is not to mention all the websites that offer superior products for cheaper prices (similar to iTunes) or completely free.

Again, given the 20% premium we are now paying for 360 games coupled with the advertising aspects (demonstrations, promotions, community events, direct advertisements, user trend tracking, etc.) and the service's extremely anemic features, the only reason they are charging for this is to nickel and dime everybody.
Speaking of nickel and dime, take a look at, oh, any purchaseable item on Live.
Having spent $0 on Live, but having purchased for the Wii virtual console,
Ray

-----
I'm william Shatner and I'm a shaman - what's your game?
http://www.livejournal.com/users/raymarden/
I love you, mom.

*sits back at his Playstation 3 continues to get constant upgrades and doesn't have to worry about paying for the Playstation Network*

And here I'd happly pay Sony $5 a month for complete access to my firends list in every game and dedcated voice servers for every game. As far as I'm conserned XBL is well worth the price compared to the weak online support we currently have on our PS3s.

LOL Cabezone, I was about to say Microsoft has been taking notes from Flagship Studios.

*sits back at his Playstation 3 continues to get constant upgrades and doesn't have to worry about paying for the Playstation Network*

This is true: Stuff is starting to cost money that never cost money before because of the sole fact these people are greedy as hell and the consumers don't care or are to stupid to know otherwise (we are talking about console users here).

Only a fool thinks microsoft needs gold subscription money to run xbox live. They need the money because they want to turn a huge profit, not because what PC gamers have had for FREE for 15 years suddenly costs microsoft a lot of money.

Don't be one of these fools who thinks Blizzard needs $15 a month from every customer to pay for WOW. With enough customers their costs are paid with $1 a month and the rest is in their pockets.

> you aren't forced to buy 09 because EA decided to shut down the master servers.

oh jesus this is what happens when you read a forum full of kids.

EA DID THIS A FEW YEARS AGO, THEY SHUT DOWN THEIR LIVE GAME SERVERS AND YOU COULDNT PLAY ONLINE ANYMORE

the fact that you don't know this and stated the exact contrary shows how the world as you know it is coming to an end

The merits of XBL Gold in general are another debate. I'm just shocked that they are, in essence, limiting people's access to advertising.

You can get the 13-month Gold access for $40-45 online.

But honestly, you are using their bandwidth while downloading, their servers for persistent online stats and messaging, and their matchmaking software (which, in my opinion is quite good, it's real easy to fire in and play, or play with friends without having to find a server and worry about team balancing).

I play UT3, CoD4... hell every game ive played on PC for FREE after inital purchace and had ZERO problems with finding servers that have features to my liking. Friends lists? Big fucking deal, I have AIM, MSN, ect.

Stuff is starting to cost money that never cost money before because of the sole fact these people are greedy as hell and the consumers don't care or are to stupid to know otherwise (we are talking about console users here).

Another thing to consider: As many PC and console gamers know, if companies host their own master servers for organizing games, when a new edition comes out (such as sports games) or an old game becomes unpopular, master servers are shut down, and no one gets to play anymore (unless the game is modded by the community, or another company takes over the master server).

Here, MS *IS* the master server for every title. There (in theory) should be absolutely no risk to online gamers who prefer older versions to newer. Like Madden 08 vs 09? You use Xbox Live, you aren't forced to buy 09 because EA decided to shut down the master servers. This, of course, is a nice incentive to developers too.

What I think that they should do as another incentive for xbox live paying customers is to offer, say, 1000 or 2000 MS points every year so that there is something that you GET for your subscription.

But honestly, you are using their bandwidth while downloading, their servers for persistent online stats and messaging, and their matchmaking software (which, in my opinion is quite good, it's real easy to fire in and play, or play with friends without having to find a server and worry about team balancing). Is it worth $50? It's arguable. Do I enjoy paying for it? No, that's silly, no one enjoys paying for things. Should it all be free? I'd argue no, there is merit to paying a nominal fee, but I think there should be some sort of reward as well (like some free points per year).

This comment was edited on Dec 5, 12:19.