I can deal with an occasional hiccup in the Xbox Live servers. I can take looking at ads whenever I’m browsing the dashboard or marketplace. However, when I sit down and actually think about all the revenue going to Microsoft, I wonder what’s actually in it for us, the consumers. Xbox Live is a gold mine for Microsoft, and we’re the worker monkeys.
Dance, Monkey! If you dance well enough, maybe you’ll get an Arcade game that’s actually an ad!
Let’s dig deep into the system. We pay $50 a year for Xbox Live. That’s fine, it’s a great service and the price is quite alright. Then we’re shown ads on the Dashboard and Marketplace, which must get at least 8 million views a day. If you happen to buy anything from the Marketplace, that’s more revenue going into Microsoft’s hands. Also, whenever you buy a Microsoft published game, they get a piece of that cake as well. Finally, the icing on the cake is that more than half of the free content you can download is sponsored, so Microsoft isn’t even paying for it.
Because everyone wants a Snakes on a Plane gamerpic. Right?
Let’s take a look at some of the free Arcade content we’ve been offered thus far. Texas Hold ‘Em and Carcassonne were made free for very limited periods. Hold ‘Em was free for 48 hours after its release, and Carcassonne was given away for the “Live is 5ive” celebration. Undertow was given away free because of Live downtime from Christmas to January. Yaris was basically a downloadable ad. Finally, Aegis Wing was a fully realized, free from the get-go game ,that in all reality we should be seeing more of.
Yaris, we can do without.
So, I ask you. Do you feel you’re getting your money’s worth out of Xbox Live? I do agree that $50 a year is worth it, but I also feel that if Microsoft is going to continue tossing advertisements at us. Ultimately, I feel that we should get a bit more as Gold members. Maybe they should dip into their coffers a little bit and give us a break on DLC for the popular games, or let us in on some of those cool gamerpics that are out there that we have to pay for.
Although the only gamerpic worth getting is free, and that’s the Sarcastic Gamer one.
| Related Posts:
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
27 responses so far ↓
1 andyg8180 // Apr 9, 2008 at 10:14 am
I’m actually okay fronting $50 a year ($35 from overstock deals) because all the features like easy matchmaking, voice chat, the messaging, all easy to use and fun… Also, you dont have to install a demo… play it right off the bat…
What i cant get over is how many flippin ads there are… I mean, I think with PSHome getting a revamp, the blades need to get revamped to be much more cleaner… But with each update microsft launched, you noticed more room and space…. for ADS… i mean, jeezus, they added an extra blade so they can put more ads and gracefully called it marketplace… If that wasn’t obvious Microsoft lol…
Hey, can we see something out this deal? I dont like getting the super super super super short end of the stick…
I think sony is slowing creeping up the back of Microsoft, and if they don’t straighten up and hook us up with a cleaner dashboard and less ads in our PAY SERVICE, sony will definitly take the reins and give Microsoft the Shame Spear…
2 Minbad // Apr 9, 2008 at 10:17 am
What? Everybody waking up all of the sudden after years of blind fanboism? (3, to be precise)… Sad, real sad.
3 Mehar // Apr 9, 2008 at 10:20 am
I don’t mind the $50 a year, but mabye $50 is not enough to maintain the servers, so instead of rasing the subscription price they make up for it with ads.
But you can only see the ads if your account is a “adult” account.
4 Black-Eye Brick // Apr 9, 2008 at 10:37 am
I would gladly endure the advertisements if it means more money used appropriately to help us. I realize it’s somewhat a pipe dream, but anything that could mean faster servers or more exclusive content for the 360 works for me.
What is much less tolerable is the fact that the ads seem to bring the Dashboard to a crawl sometimes. I could do without the ads when I’m actually playing a game.
5 Kiltman67 // Apr 9, 2008 at 10:43 am
Interesting point that I never really considered. There’s so many websites and services out there who offer you the chance to lose all the ads if you either subscribe or buy a product and yet one of the biggest companies in the world won’t do that.
6 Sean "Rothbart" Workman // Apr 9, 2008 at 11:05 am
No. No, no, no, no, no…. I do NOT get $50 worth out of Live and I won’t be renewing it when my subscription runs out. They’ve got you guys by the sacks and you’ve got no alternative if you want to play multiplayer games. They’ve conditioned you to think it’s truly worth your money… They’re also doing it under the guise that running Live costs them “so much money” that they have to charge. Then again, they’re also plastering ads all over everything, nickel and diming for crap like themes and gamerpics, and they overprice their accessories like hard drives and wireless networking adapters to about double what they should realistically cost.
Cry me a friggin’ river Microsoft, I could care less how much Live costs you to run… that’s YOUR burden, not mine. Add to that the problems Live experiences under peak load (or as I like to call it, the “post holiday season”) and it’s laughable. I can’t even boot up my console during peak usage times without a loading symbol halting me in my tracks because they can’t keep their online system well resourced? WTF are they doing with the $50 x millions that they’re getting from Live fees alone?
Basically, you’re paying more to the company that charges the most for crap that shouldn’t cost NEAR what it does, advertises all over you, and even after that, can’t keep their service running 24/7 during “KNOWN IN ADVANCE TO BE” heavy load times? I mean seriously… what is it that’s worth $50 to you guys? Where does that “worth” stop? Would it be worth it at $60? $70? $80? $100?
Sheesh! Send me your $50/year guys… I’ll refuse to play with you on Christmas, cuss you out, and tell you how great your mom was in bed last night over voice chat if you want! It’s almost as good as Live, amiright?
And for the folks suggesting we pay more for no ads… I’d like to kick you in the nuts. Please form a single file line.
7 torreyjs // Apr 9, 2008 at 11:16 am
Its worth it
8 Pakorn1 // Apr 9, 2008 at 11:19 am
@ Rothbart -
Why isn’t that its own article?
9 Keith K // Apr 9, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Forgive me if Im wrong, but I thought Xbox online multiplayer was peer-to-peer except in very specific (and recent) instances, such as Frontlines.
This begs the serious and sincere question; “Really, what ARE you paying for?”
All I can gather is that you’re paying $50 a year for the honour and privilege of having all the community networking tools we’ve had since the inception of the internet, all smacked together on a low-def TV and no Mozilla to help you through the Microsoft BS.
10 Krelith // Apr 9, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I sense a Rothbart Rant coming on!
11 Krelith // Apr 9, 2008 at 12:17 pm
I will be re-subbing but only because I made the choice to buy CoD4 on 360 instead of ps3. I bought my year’s subscription from play.com for £40 ($80 by the way!).
Fact is, (and yes, I owned a ps3 first), ps3 has free online gaming, free themes and pictures and whatever other misc items you want, and virtually every online game has dedicated servers! ALL FOR FREE!!!
FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the hell out of my 360 games but Microsoft need to wake up and smell the Sony, because otherwise that pedestal they’ve been sitting on all this time is going to be knocked the hell down.
In fact, after writing this response, I may even go out and trade my 360 version of CoD4 for the ps3 version and not bother re-subbing at all…
Damn you Animathias for bringing this up! lol
12 LJ // Apr 9, 2008 at 1:41 pm
All I have to say is that any banner on xbox live ussualy(95%) when you click on it gives you the chance to win something. I mean I don’t mind the banners and most of them tell me about DLC thats came online or a new arcade game that came out anyways. I’m not saying your not justified, but I think that this could all be fixed if you went into your system setting and turned the banners off.
13 NoneOfYourBusiness // Apr 9, 2008 at 1:46 pm
They also mae money off the console itself….
They have to me making near a billion or more a year on the thing. But throw you a bone they will not.
DANCE MONKEY DANCE
BUT
Your money does go to bribing publishers for exclusivity or exclusive DLC. So you are good to go!
14 Saccia // Apr 9, 2008 at 2:04 pm
In my best Lono impersonation voice:
“YOU GIVE ME A DANCE, MONKEY!”
15 hollywood21639 // Apr 9, 2008 at 2:13 pm
As far as the ads go………if you go to settings and opt out of the ads then they won’t be on your dashboard.
@rothbart
That free PSN is so great right? I’d rather pay $50 for standard things in ALL games like voice chat, truskill, etc. A lot of PS3 games don’t even support voice over the same game let alone all games. Why did a few people I know return their PS3 copy of R6V2 and get a 360 copy due to PSN being down? PSN is a basic service and Live is a premium service.
16 Shadders // Apr 9, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I had a similar discussion on a different site the other day, I’m in the UK so we pay £40 ($80), and although I will keep paying, I’m not happy about it and don’t think it’s good value for money, I want to play Halo and LIVE is the only way for me to do it, they have us over a barrel.
Sony’s service might not be as good, but a lot of the benefits of LIVE aren’t paid for anyway, the friends list, the in-game dash, chatting to friends, pretty much everything other than playing games is all free, we got that with our consoles.
Playing games on PS3 is free, sure the chat might be buggy in some games, and not everyone has a mic, but in reality it’s not $80 worse than the 360.
Microsoft just don’t offer enough to warrant the fee, if you take away the dash and friends list which isn’t part of my £40, their service is only marginally better than Sony’s.
And Sony’s offering will get better and better, in-game XMB is only months away and that will make the services even more similar, what will MS do then? What can they offer us to make the fee worthwhile?
17 Mallavu939 // Apr 9, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Animathias, what the heck? Last time I checked your gamer pic wasn’t the SG one. Did you change it because you saying that it’s the only one we need is sort of hypocritical…
18 Vote4Drizzt // Apr 9, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I personally would like to see the system know your most played game and make that game’s most popular pic free, this would be safe becuase most of the people on live would have spent so much time on a game that changing you most played would take months of work, to get a single pic.
19 Keith K // Apr 9, 2008 at 3:46 pm
@hollywood21639
Those are Ubisoft’s servers.. RSV2’s online problems had nothing to do with Sony or the PS3. Ubisoft has STILL not come out and said what went wrong there.
Those servers that you and your friends were playing on, on Xbox, also Ubisoft’s servers.
Why were Ubisofts Xbox servers running fine and their PS3 servers not? I have no idea.. but I suspect it was something stupid that had to do with lazy drunks in Montreal leaving for their long Easter weekend early. Either way, it’s presumptuous for you to claim to have the answers when you claim not even to know the problem.
20 Animathias // Apr 9, 2008 at 5:19 pm
@Mallavu: My Non-friend gamerpic is the SG one, my personal one is a picture I’ve taken.
21 Luckie // Apr 9, 2008 at 5:47 pm
I live in Scotland and over here it’s £40 a year (which is about the price of a new game and about $80?) and I don’t mind paying it. We don’t get any ads at all - the most ad-like thing we get over here is Inside XBox.
22 Mehar // Apr 9, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I can see where some people are coming from, but if we are getting ads lets atleast be thankful its only for stuff on the XBLM and not things like coke, Viagra, or any dating service.
23 Shadders // Apr 9, 2008 at 7:26 pm
@Mehar
You’re right actually the ads are generally for things I care about and several times have alerted me to an arcade game I wasn’t aware was released so they don’t bother me all that much.
24 dirt junkie // Apr 9, 2008 at 9:10 pm
guys how long do you think $ony are gonna keep their service free??? Seriously don’t think that once theve got more consoles than M$ in the front room they won’t turn around and say the same things M$ are right now???
25 Mehar // Apr 9, 2008 at 9:13 pm
dirt junkie: Just wait till the PSN see’s as much server load as XBL, eventually they would need to refine their model.
26 Mehar // Apr 9, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Also, when DLC goes free, I think the devs probably get some compensation for making it free in the first place, which probably comes from the ads.
27 Eplayr.com | ** gaming news that matters ** // Apr 10, 2008 at 9:46 am
We\’re all just worker monkeys, working for Microsoft | Eplayr.com…
\r\nSo what do we really get for our $50 yearly Xbox Live subscription? Are you re…
Leave a Comment