Xbox Live Silver Accounts Now Wait a Week For Demos 108
1up notes a change in the way that Xbox Live Silver-level (free) memberships work. Now folks that don't pay will have to wait an additional week to get game demos. Microsoft's Xbox representative Major Nelson assures us it's not meant to 'annoy' users of the service, but to provide additional value to Gold subscribers. "When people talk about features they'd like to see added to an Xbox Live Gold subscription, dedicated servers, expanded buddy lists or separate bandwidth pipes for popular downloads are first to mind. Instead of adding features to the Gold experience, however, they're "enhancing" Gold subscriptions by continuing a practice started last summer of stripping Silver members of features and making them Gold-only."
FInally! (Score:4, Funny)
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When the 360 was released, they announced there would be content that Silver members would -never- get. That hasn't happened, and they're lucky. What were they going to do, refuse to play games online? Oh noes.
Re:FInally! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not new (Score:5, Informative)
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Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
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-GiH
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Quickly move towards back of head.
Make *whoosh* sound with mouth.
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I don't see why everyone is sensationalizing this. Bandwidth costs money - Gold subscribers at $50 a year pay for that. If you have a free account, why shouldn't it be considered a gift that you're able to download these things at all?
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And that is why I have no problem paying for Steam and Battle.net. Every month when I see the bills for those services, I am reminded how grateful I should be that some companies saw the opportunity that was there to host online games and have a friends list and the ability to download demos, purchase games and the like. I
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Layne
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Steam activation (Score:1)
And that is why I have no problem paying for Steam
I assume that was intended as sarcasm. But Steam does cost the end-user money on top of the retail price of a single-player PC game. Some machines used for single-player gaming are kept off the Internet on purpose so that they don't get rooted and become spam zombies. A player on such a computer would have to buy a modem (Google Products shows USB modems starting at $20) and sign up for NetZero ($15 a month) to activate the game because unlike Windows Product Activation, Steam does not work with activation
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It was.
And that relates to Xbox Live how? If one really wanted to keep their machine off the internet, they wouldn't be able to download demos, they wouldn't even have need for a friends list, let alone be able to access it, and they wouldn't be able to play online either. Very few games require Steam activation unless you purchase them on Steam, but then that means you already have so
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If you are playing Open Battle.net, that is true - you host the game.
But if you are playing closed Battle.net, that is false - the server hosts the game.
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Remember when TV was paid for by the advertisements? Yeah, and then we got suckered into paying to be fed MORE advertisements.
What is XBox Live except an advertising stream that generates revenue for MS? And to get the highest level of advertising on your plate...you get to pay for it!
Bandwidth costs money, but that is most certainly not the only part of the equation here. That bandwidth cost is simply the cost of spoon feeding you advertising, which ge
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Yes, its worth every penny I don't give MS.
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I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that it should be free because these are demos. They're advertisements for the full game. Demos manage to be free to download for PC games, and PC demos are frequently much larger.
The most obvious way to solve the problem like PC demos did: make it advertising supported. Y
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I download tones of shit off the internet on a daily basis. I dont need a gold subscription to get everything else off the internet.
When I bought my xbox 360 this gift was something that was in the product description and every game i buy says "downloadable content" available on the back.
Anyway the whole subscription thing for consoles is something I can get on my PC for free. I can
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I'm actually kind of glad that my gold subscription actually has a sense of worth to it now more than just playing games online (which I don't do all that often anyway). Also, as long as the week delay doesn't put the demo out for Silver members after the game comes out, I don't see where the actual
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$5 a month to play online, sure, ok, I buy that. They want control over the whole online multiplayer environment, but to take away permissions that previously existed (I was about to use the word 'features,' but then I realized that seeing content when it's released isn't really a feature) and allowing paying accounts to access the demos before the non-paying ones just stinks.
If they wanted to add more perceived value, they could offer pre-rele
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COD4... my roommate got it somehow... not sure where it came from. I thought he signed up online. And I'm pretty sure his account isn't gold. They should have a Game Prereleases section or something in addition to the demos.
and I never saw any additional free stuff that was gold-only. I've gotten free shit that's come with games (skins/avatars).
Game videos are not a perk, unless they're Xboxlive exclusive.
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Adding a delay to Silver members is providing "additional value" to Gold members? How so? As a Gold member, I get games on release day right now. With this change, I *still* get games on release day.
There is no value added to the gold account. The only change in value is some being stripped from the Silver accounts. If he were being honest, he'd have said "This is not mean to annoy users, but to provide INCENTIVE to subscribe to gold accounts".
Additional value would be free downloadable content or discounts on the games for gold members.
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[Hint: Look at the main page of /. where it says subscribers get stories earlier]
I guess now Major Nelson is ripping off Commander Taco for ideas, right?
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A slashdot story is the final release, thats not a preview or a demo from the story
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There's no difference here, other than the fact that one involves Microsoft.
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Maybe Commander Taco should take Xbox Live to court over IP infringement, after all it was Slashdots idea first! THOSE BASTARDS!
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Other words, eh?
The Title:
Why Not:
Everyone keeps taking about them eroding the Silver experience instead of making Gold worth while, aside from the fact that this is the way XBL has worked for over a year now and nothing about the delivery schedule has changed they're actually adding a feature to the Silver accounts in that they now have the ability to see the Gold content they don't
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When did people forget that that is what demos are: nothing but advertisements, plain and simple.
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Spend 15 minutes with the Game for free and determine if it's worth spending $60 to play more
Would you consider going to a car dealership and taking a car for a test drive "advertising". I'm not talking about the sales pitch before and after the drive, I'm not talking about what brought you to the dealership in the first place but the actual test drive... How is a demo any different than
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Trust me, it's advertising. Just because people have been suckered into paying for various types of advertising doesn't mean it makes any sense to do so. Remember, there's a sucker born every minute!
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Just sayin
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Layne
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That doesn't make them not advertisements.
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As a console gamer demos have never been "free" for me and IMO they're well worth the cost of a magazine or XBL subscription to get because of what they provide in aiding my purchase choices.
I couldn't care less if they're an "a
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If the person who wrote the title actually knew what they were talking about it would read:...
I think the the fact that Gold subscribers getting things EARLY as a perk being twisted into pessimism is rather ridiculous.
So, your perspective is:
Silver members get demos just when they always would have - when the demo's ready. Gold members get an "enhanced" service where demo makers rush out a demo a week before it's ready yet miraculously manage it in such a bug free state that their new, rush product is so good they don't need to modify it to match what they used to deliver a week later and now do for Silver users?
Wow. Game makers are getting really good.
Alternatively, a year ago, Microsoft imposed an arbitrary delay on Silver users getting demos - demos that system buyers had been led to believe they got when they were ready as part of their basic purchase - in order to create a false sense of value for Gold users. Rather than face the pretty reasonable outrage of the community at the time, they hid what they did, not reminding Silver users about how they'd just had what they'd already bought from Microsoft ganked. Now, a year later, figuring a lot of people have forgotten they paid for a system with a service that promised Silver users getting demos when they were ready, they figure there won't be such a backlash. Now it's more profitable for them to say, "Hey, you're missing out. [Please don't remember we manufactured that missing out]. Buy the expensive version! [Please don't remember that you did buy that but we, uh, stripped it and gave it to a more expensive version.]"
The summary was incorrect. It should have read:
XBox Live figures less backlash, now tells Silver users how they screwed them a year ago to encourage upgrading now.
The sad thing is the number of sheep who don't get that taking something away from one service, only to make another seem better, really is a degredation of the original and not an enhancement of the newer one.
They successfully teach Microsoft:
Hey, in a year's time, why don't you release "XBox Live Platinum - With advance access to Halo 4 demos that Gold users don't get, all for $19.99/month"?
The sheep will then see Platinum as an "upgrade" despite the fact they bought a system with Silver that was meant to have demos when they arrive, then upgraded to Gold to get them, and now have to upgrade yet again to Platinum.
I have a 360 and the free Silver membership which, as far as I can tell, is worth exactly what I pay for it. There's not a lot left for Microsoft to strip from it. They can't remove store access - it just means they sell less. They can't remove their current poor demo access - it just means less sales. Take any more and they just cost themselves money.
If anything, they've already gone too far. They've hobbled so many of their games as to make them almost unplayable without a Gold account (Test Drive Unlimited requires your gamerscore to unlock the game and then ties the easy methods for doing it to the auction system that again requires Gold membership). Knowing I'll inevitably find my play experience degraded as punishment for not giving Microsoft more money each month, I buy less 360 games and more on the PC where makers like Valve manage to offer all of the services without "needing" enhanced and expensive levels of service. They create a system where I'm punished for not spending, what, half a dozen bucks a month? In exchange, I buy $20-30 less in games each month for the system because I know it's artificially hobbled. The point has already come where trying to grab money now has had a knock on effect on how much money they get overall.
The challenge is, companies like Microsoft have some numbers they can predict and see easily and some they can't.
They know: Hey, since stripping features from Silver, we're up 1m Gold accounts from our previous predictions. We make $6m a month more, high fives all
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The demos are free, they will still get them, it's just the gold members get it 1 week earlier as an exclusive.
That's not so bad now is it?
Sure gold may be a rip off but that's not up for debate in this instance, silver is still 'free' - so really, if you don't like it, pony up.
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#3 reason is probably that I already have way too many games
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JUST LIKE SLASHDOT!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
You guys are right - M$ doesn't innovate, it steals ideas from others, now including Commodore Burito!
Hmm... (Score:1)
really? (Score:3, Insightful)
I was reading the major nelson site about this yesterday after reading tycho's post at PA about it.
It annoys me that value is being considered as a zero sum game. To enhance the value of gold memberships, they do so not by adding value to it, but detracting value from the free version.
And isn't the point of demos to produce interest in sales of new games, thereby increasing MS's licensing revenue? How exactly does this help increase their bottom line? I wouldn't expect anyone to upgrade for this reason alone, especially as it's done in poor taste.
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Rather than having 1 massive wave of traffic to download the latest "HotDemo", you have 2 and the the paying customers get first crack. This lowers their infrastructure demands and (in theory) should be better for each set of customers because by having 2 availability dates the downloads for each set should be faster.
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At any rate, the reason given by major nelson was clear, and this was not it.
The Mysterious Future (Score:2)
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Slashdot subscriptions offer real value in other ways though.
I don't see a problem (Score:3, Insightful)
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Doing The Wrong Thing (Score:2)
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No value was added (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that no actual value was added. A gold subscripion pre-update is exactly the same as one post-update. No features were added, and nothing was changed. Demos are available at the same time they were before.
Adding value typically requires adding something that wasn't there previously.
(Not that gold actually is a value to begin with. "For only the cost of a game a year, you can actually use the multiplayer part of the games you bought! As opposed to PC and PS3 players, who can use that part without paying anything extra...")
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Granted, I don't have a PS3, so I'm operating from heresay, but from what I understand it isn't much better than PC MP gaming is.
I've been playing multiplayer online PC Gaming since Doom 2 (yes, over a damn modem). While I have always enjoyed it, and I didn't complain about it much at the time, it was a royal pain in the ass, and required a pretty hefty investment of time/energy/stress to get working now.
For example: I
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BTW, your "decent gaming rig" takes up to 5 minutes to turn on and load XP? Something is wrong.
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Actually it can be seen as adding value.
So relative to a silver subscription, it has increased in value. Before if you w
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The extended warranty is more valuable.
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The problem is that no actual value was added. A gold subscripion pre-update is exactly the same as one post-update. No features were added, and nothing was changed. Demos are available at the same time they were before.
Depends on how you look at it. If you are paying 4.99/month for gold and it is taking you longer to download a demo because a bunch of non-paying silver accounts are downloading at the same time, removing the silver accounts for the first week and upping the total possible bandwidth is value added.
Yay! Another reason my PS3 pwns your X360! (Score:1)
How to add value (Score:4, Interesting)
M$ is not an organization of geniuses. If they were even reasonably intelligent, they would know that this isn't a viable way to try to scrape some revenue out of the enormous money pit that XBOX Live has become.
I think spending real money for leasing software (which is what anyone who spends any money on Live is doing) is plainly idiotic. It's roughly equivalent of rent-to-own and paycheck advance businesses in terms of ripping off consumers.
But if you are of the mindset that consumers exist to be taken advantage of, it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to see a better way. If you want to add value to entice people to get XBOX Live Gold, start giving them something YOU actually think is worth something, Microsoft, not pointing out that they still have some zero-value feature that you took away from other users.
Give Gold members Microsoft Points free when they get achievements and leave the Silver members with just their Achievement points. Or alternatively allow Gold members to simply accrue points when they renew their subscriptions. The worst possible outcome is that the subscribers take the free stuff and don't buy anything else so you haven't made any money beyond the subscription fee, but by the same token it costs you exactly nothing to give them this stuff for free, so it's a wash. On the other hand, if you get them to open their wallets to "rent" just one arcade title that they couldn't quite afford with the free points then you'll have gained real money for the same nothing, and potentially hooked them on the idea of downloaded content.
You could also invent a new more expensive "Platinum" membership tier that worked like cell phone service where you're allotted a certain number of points every month and have to pay extra for anything above that.
Personally I think software-as-a-service and pay-for-download is the most evil thing any corporation ever thought up. It is a completely one-sided arrangement and all of the advantage goes to the corporation, not the consumer. With physical product there is more cost to the corporation, but the consumer is given with a persistent and non-volatile representation of the software. With digital product, the corporation saves the cost of manufacture - a savings that is rarely apparent in digital download pricing - and the customer is given a volatile representation of the software on a device that the corporation can order to alter, destroy, or disable without the customer's consent. In the event of failure of that device, the customer is completely at the mercy of the corporation to replace the lost software. I would like to see the entire thing go down in flames; so please please please, ignore my advice, Microsoft.
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They are not nearly as one-sided as television commercials, I agree, but average ad men only need to reel in horror if their product is bad. You don't think of car salesmen as being in advertising?
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To abuse you analogy:
It would be like test driving a Corvette and then getting a Geo metro with nice seats.
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I suppose some people think that car salesmen are just public servants, and not trying to tip your decision to buy a car in their favor.
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It costs bandwidth, and t
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Wow, you are so clueless on this point that I don't even know where to start. Maybe try a little research before you make a completely incorrect statement like this. Or would that violate your personal code to bash MS regardless of the facts?
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The fact is that on the surface telling someone that you're adding value to something by subtracting value from someone else is stupid. You don't think M$ made this more obvious to Silver members to give them more incentive to pay for Gold? You think XBOX Live is a pr
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I'm definitely anti-microsoft, but it's not mindless. I have perfectly good reasons for my stance. I spent several years in a career where I had to work very closely with M$ products and with M$ themselves. I have seen first hand how the company performs and how their sof
how are these arguments relevant? (Score:1)
Watch... (Score:1, Flamebait)
As their dominance and power spreads, they'll soon be installing two water fountains in public places: one for Silver accounts, and for Gold. The bathrooms and movie theaters, too, will be segregated based upon one's Xbox Live Status. And, if a Gold user wishes to sit on a full bus, a Silver user will be required to give up their seat for him.
Of course, it won't stop there: as the idea of "separate but unequal" faciliti
as bad as nagware (Score:1)
OK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!
Value terminology (Score:2)
Yes they are putting it in terms that show it in the beast light, but the terminology is valid. Think of it in reverse. Let's say you sign up for a year of X-Box Live Gold and pay in advance. Now let's say that Microsoft decides to give all the benefits of X-Box Live Gold to Silver members. Is that "Gold" membership now more valuable, less valuable, or the same value? You're getting all the same things you had before... Would a 12 month subscription be worth $49.99 to a new X-Box owner? What's the v
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I'll agree that Live! has the best integration, right now, out of any platform, however while Nintendo doesn't seem to see any problem with its cobbled together mess of "Friend Codes", Sony seems to be working hard to build up the infrastructure that the XBox 360
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