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:Gears of War made me skew the figures up... (Score:5, Interesting)
"An astonishing 70% of Live users have purchased a title from the Xbox Live arcade."
Which is a figure that to be fair on MS, gets more impressive when dummy accounts are taken into consideration.
I hope Live on PC doesn't stick... (Score:1, Interesting)
PC Online is very different than Console Online (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft is doing what they've always been trying to do. Just because it's had success in one area, it tries to push it's product in a totally unrelated area expecting the same success.
I have to say that Xbox live is really well done. However, it's successful because it's the only game in town on the Xbox and 360.
On the PC, there's a plethora of games out there that allow you to play online for free after you purchase it. I can see if my friends are online to play against via IM, Yahoo Messenger, Googletalk, ICQ. I can email them and chat with them. I can VOIP with them. I can download game demos from many sites. I can download videos from many sites.
What can Xbox live offer me that I can't get for free online? Gamerpoints? I can play with UNO with people on Live?
Honestly, if I have Halo 2 for the PC, who is still playing Halo 2 on the Xbox? Halo 3 will be on the 360 by that time, so all those Halo 2 PC gamers will just be playing against someone else who has Halo2 on the PC.
Re:I hope Live on PC doesn't stick... (Score:2, Interesting)
If that is the alternative, then I sure hope live catches on on windows aswell. More so because I own an xbox, and it'd be nice to play from that with friends of mine who can actually afford hardware that is useful under vista.
Re:For what do we have to pay? (Score:1, Interesting)
A PC is not a gilded cage (Score:5, Interesting)
The same is not true on PC (much though MS would wish otherwise). There are countless online systems available, and countless ways that games use those systems or integrate with their own. I really don't see many companies being interested in this unless MS waves a big fat paycheck under their nose. The Valves, Blizzards and NCSofts of this world aren't suddenly going to dump their products just because MS is trying to muscle in. And I don't see the likes of Gamespy or XFire disappearing either unless MS engage in some extremely anticompetitive behaviour to kill them off.
In fact I see next to no reason for users to be interested either. Unless you own a 360 already and therefore get Windows Live Gold for free, where is the incentive. What is so compelling about the MS service to justify forking out $50 to use it when the same can be had for free elsewhere?
Re:Lets See How Long This Lasts (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you kidding? I wouldn't do it for long, but I'd pay for Xbox live just to enjoy the satisfaction of joining a game with a bunch of joypadders and vaporizing them all with der maus und keyboard. But frankly if they have any clue they won't merge PC and Console FPS play.
Re:Charging for what was free (Score:3, Interesting)
If they're causing more serious problems and I report them, and 9 other people report them as well, then they'll get their account reviewed and banned. They've lost all of their achievements, they've lost their friends list, and all of their other account details but most importantly they'll have to pay another $50 to sign back up. How much do you think the "riff-raff" would be willing to lose before they just go bother people on some free service where they can create new accounts to their hearts content?
I loathed online gaming for the longest time, it was a pain to find quality servers, it was a pain to find people who were my skill level, it was a pain to keep in touch with other gamers, and it was damn near impossible to get all three of those at once. I barely got any enjoyment out of online gaming in comparison to the work involved. I stuck mostly to LAN parties or split screen console games. When Dead or Alive Ultimate came out on the Xbox 1 I wanted to play online against some college friends so I signed up for Xbox Live... after about an hour I couldn't believe how streamlined and simple the whole service was. I've had an Xbox live account for 3 years now and I couldn't be happier with it. I could care less if the server us just one of the peers, I rarely have problems with lag or slowdown (probably because the game is built to handle the load of acting as a server) which is a lot more then I can say for the majority of the "proper" servers I find through the various free methods.
I used to spout off all sorts of crap about how stupid paying for Xbox Live is... bullet listed items with sound arguments and sources... While most of that is still true; and they really aren't doing much, the resultant ease of use the system creates makes playing online with a quality connection, skill matched opponents and plenty of options as easy as just loading the game and picking up the controller. For me, that's worth every last damn penny they charge.