Xbox Live Cracks 6 Million, Windows Cost Revealed 117
Kotaku offers up a Microsoft press release on the unexpectedly early arrival of 6,000,000 players to the Xbox Live service. Along with some rather odd statistics to pass on (over 2,300,000,000 hours in-game time spent on the network already), there are some very interesting numerical tidbits passed on. An astonishing 70% of Live users have purchased a title from the Xbox Live arcade. Nearly half of all users hit the Marketplace at least once a session. This all has to add up to good news, financially, for Microsoft; but are they overreaching? GameInformer reports on pricing for Live on Windows Vista. Gold-level service is exactly the same as on the Xbox ($19.99 for three months), while Silver is free. Encouragingly, if you're already a Gold member on the 360 the same will be true on your PC. Just the same, the company is now charging for services normally taken for granted as a freebie on the PC platform.
Re:I hope Live on PC doesn't stick... (Score:2, Informative)
However I also object to paying just to be able to use games online. I mean, the 'service' of finding matches with another player, and have your local bandwidth/computer systems take up the load, I consider a mandatory part of a game with 'online content' and one that should be bundled in the initial purchase price.
If I'm paying £40 for a game, I expect it to be either mostly standalone, at which point the online service is a minor thing, and therefore should be a small fraction of that cost, and built in, or the online part to be the major component, and therefore also included in the initial cost, since it's otherwise 'not fit for purpose'.
I'll make an exception for MMOs, as they literally don't work offline, however I still consider it unreasonable to charge for both content _and_ time spent playing. Free game + sub seems reasonable. Expensive game + no sub also seems reasonable. The exact model I'd say depends a lot on the replayability of the game in question.
Re:For what do we have to pay? (Score:3, Informative)
Good attempt to flame Microsoft for no reason, though! Don't let those silly things like "facts" get in the way!
The requirements as they stand on MSDN now (Score:3, Informative)
Games for Windows: Technical Requirements [microsoft.com]
* 1.1 Games Explorer Integration
It's only a matter of time before we get a 1.8 Windows Live Gold support* 1.2 Support Parental Controls
* 1.3 Support Rich Saved Games
* 1.4 Support the Xbox 360 Common Controller for Windows
* 1.5 Support Multiple Aspect Ratios and Resolutions
* 1.6 Support Launch from Windows Media Center
* 1.7 Direct3D Support