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[D i Z]

Free for gamers.

They should definitely find out why it can be free on mobile, handheld and pc but not on console then.

I'm really not trying to be difficult. I would like a reason that doesn't defy logic or an investment.


Why?

He finds the service to be inadequate value, clearly. He doesn't have to pay to voice an opinion or to have a personal interest in seeing it changed. Incredible. He has paid for the console and the game. He has enough interest to voice an opinion. And his refusal to acquiesce is action enough. He has voted with his wallet and may continue to vote and publicly make his issue with the system known.

Your grasp of the water analogy is sorely lacking. I said it was as if you had paid for the water and then had to pay to use it with a specific product. Just like you have to pay for your internet and then pay again to use it for your console multiplayer gaming. It's a fairly simple analogy you managed to fumble. Adding some extra element to the analogy, such as purifying the water or having to buy additional water from a separate source to meet your daily needs, is just strawmanning but I'll presume it was unintentional.

Your whole beat your chest, trying to jam your opinion down my throat approach just shows how shallow it is. No one said you are owed anything, so add strawman to the pile. No one said anything about entitlement. These are just boring statements made in the absence of anything meaningful to say.

Nope. He never stated that. That was you high-jacking his position. Untwist for a moment.
Secondly, my grasp in my own analogy is just fine. Your extrapolation into the taxation of water is something that I am also very familiar with. As in here in California (never mind globally) we pay for water privileges, and then are fined for the use of it. If you don't know what you are talking about, excuse yourself.
I wasn't then, nor am I now engaged in a conversation about who's opinion is being crammed down whom ever's throat. The topic is about the very same thing you are complaining about. Discuss it or don't.
My question has been simple, who is paying for this "free" gaming? And why is something being "free" a right, and not a privilege to be graciously reciprocated in some measure?
Ain't shit in life free.

 

[spawnsniper]

I agree, and it's funny, there was this old E3 interview, I believe that a Sony rep (kaz or jack) that said psn would always be free.. Can't seem to find it anymore though.

Oh well

 

[cw_sasuke]

I agree - hope Nintendo wont hop on that train as well. I dont think so ...but you never know.

 

[bobbytkc]

It is because of the 360 users in america. They willingly paid for it in the face of a similarly priced direct competitor with free online. This will continue to fuck us over for generations to come.

 

[bbd23]

its one of the reasons why I dont own a current gen system

 

[PKrockin]

When PS+ turned to shit around when the PS4 came out I canceled my subscription and bought a gaming PC to complement my Nintendo systems instead. It wasn't like PS+ was going to give me a better online experience than PC, so all it was doing was forcing me to buy a bunch of games that I for the most part wasn't interested in playing for any price at that moment, let alone enough to actually buy them. Except as an added threat/incentive the moment you let your subscription expire not only are your multiplayer games broken but all those PS+ games are gone. Great move psychologically.

Amen to that. Pretty fucking simple if you ask me. It's not like it's a big secret that you don't know about until you've bought either one of the systems.

I'm sure some parents were unpleasantly surprised this morning when they found out despite spending hundreds of dollars on Jimmy's gift they have to shell out more every month just so he can play his games online.

 

[Mobius and pet octopus]

It is because of the 360 users in america. They willingly paid for it in the face of a similarly priced direct competitor with free online. This will continue to fuck us over for generations to come.

PS4 users could have done something about it. There is enough blame to go for both camps imo. I don't recall the fight to keep MP free, I do recall the fight to keep drm free or something like that. If I could choose, I would keep MP free and screw the whole trade/rent/resell. Well, in a large way I did by going PC only... except PC has a lot more share options than people give it credit (family share via steam, for example).

Nope. He never stated that. That was you high-jacking his position. Untwist for a moment.
Secondly, my grasp in my own analogy is just fine. Your extrapolation into the taxation of water is something that I am also very familiar with. As in here in California (never mind globally) we pay for water privileges, and then are fined for the use of it. If you don't know what you are talking about, excuse yourself.
I wasn't then, nor am I now engaged in a conversation about who's opinion is being crammed down whom ever's throat. The topic is about the very same thing you are complaining about. Discuss it or don't.
My question has been simple, who is paying for this "free" gaming? And why is something being "free" a right, and not a privilege to be graciously reciprocated in some measure?
Ain't shit in life free.

Amazing. Ignore and repeat ad nausea all you want. No one said gaming is free. No one said it's a privilege or a right. Strawman more? Got better time than to waste with shit posters trying to silence people's opinions.

 

[D i Z]

PS4 users could have done something about it. There is enough blame to go for both camps imo. I don't recall the fight to keep MP free, I do recall the fight to keep drm free or something like that. If I could choose, I would keep MP free and screw the whole trade/rent/resell. Well, in a large way I did by going PC only... except PC has a lot more share options than people give it credit (family share via steam, for example).



Amazing. Ignore and repeat ad nausea all you want. No one said gaming is free. No one said it's a privilege or a right. Strawman more? Got better time than to waste with shit posters trying to silence people's opinions.

Is there something about the question of how does this work that bothers you? Giving you the benefit of the doubt, that is the only reason I can come up with for you being so combative.

 

[Dremark]

Then don't?

 

[AstroNut325]

I feel dirty paying for my current 3-month sub for PS+. I don't want to pay for online MP. But I really want to get the most out of Destiny. Really enjoy that game, and there were a lot of content locked behind the PS+ paywall.

Realistically, we're not going back to free online MP ever again on consoles. 360 owners really screwed over the rest of us.

 

[GameAddict411]

That's why stuff like GWG and PS+ free stuff exists to make it not seem like a rip off.

except for the fact that ps+ games have been so lacking lately. We also have been seeing so many security compromises and a lot of games still use P2P connections for games. IMO it's a rip off.

 

[MrNelson]

It is because of the 360 users in america. They willingly paid for it in the face of a similarly priced direct competitor with free online. This will continue to fuck us over for generations to come.

Yes, because free online totally negated the insane price, the inferior multiplatform performance, mandatory installs on most games, and the the lacking library.

 

[hymanator]

When Sony announced they would begin charging for online multiplayer, they did it right after they announced that they would continue to support used games. I went from "OMG!" to "WTF?" a minute later. Was clever on their part, since they delivered the bad news while everyone was still distracted over the good news. Can't have everything go your way I guess.

 

[FarFromAnyGame]

I pay for the monthly games.

 

[Mazzo3]

Online gaming for me is just not a priority so I'm happy with the basic functionalities of free platforms.

 

[D i Z]

From my understanding, and I could be wrong, Sony doesn't have investment in the servers that supply our streaming needs. When PSN and Netflix (as an example) go down, it's usually because the servers owned by other establishments like Amazon are under attack. MS has their own server farm to fall back on, and aren't paying for a delivery service with the same reliance that Sony is. This might be one of the concrete reasons why Nintendo edges around a fully integrated online system. They have no control over it, and will have to pay to sustain its use, but have no guarantees of its maintenance. So, again if I'm wrong tell me. But the service is not, has never been "free". Also Net Neutrality is about to be tested in a major way. Expect all of these "free" experiences to be challenged so that the piper can get paid.

 

[redcrayon]

I'm sure some parents were unpleasantly surprised this morning when they found out despite spending hundreds of dollars on Jimmy's gift they have to shell out more every month just so he can play his games online.

Personally, as a dad, I think that if Jimmy wants to be owning fools on the internet all night in addition to asking for £300+ in presents for Christmas, he's old enough to have a part-time job, take a cut in pocket money or contribute an extra £5 worth of chores each month if it's to be a standing cost on the family budget

I've spent hundreds of hours online in Monster Hunter across the Wii, WiiU and 3DS, and never paid a penny. Conversely, I pay for PS+ for my Vita as the games and the sale discounts over the course of the year make it (just about) worth it to me, but I don't think I've spent more than two hours online with it. If PSN sees a price increase here in Europe I won't be resubscribing though.

 

[Vanadium]

Do I want to (Fill in the blank) free? Yes.

Do I understand that networking infrastructure/support/security are increasingly expensive?
Yes.

Do I understand that price tiers in the gaming industry are poorly thought out? YES.

Do I still want to play Titanfall 2, Destiny, Diablo 3 and occasionally The Last of Us on the same console with my friends? YES.

So I pay for it.

 

[Octavia]

It's about the principal of it to me. If they let you play the games online without a subscription but you don't get any player tracking or other online console features, that would be fine like old PS+ used to do it. Having to pay the company a cover charge just for the privilege to use features in your $60 game is silly. They aren't paying for the games p2p matchmaking servers.

For those at "It's only $3-5 a month", you can also do the opposite and look at it this way: assuming an 8 year life cycle, it's $288-480 over the span of your console's life. You could have been given the console for free, and subsidized it with the online subscription at that point.

 

[Nephilim]

I also feel like playing on console I don't have to worry about cheating as much and a level playing field is way more obtainable than on pc. If I could pay for Xbox live for pc I would

lmfao

 

[muu]

For a fee we should have access to stable servers and a welcoming online environment where you can enjoy playing with your friends and strangers alike. That's where I hoped the Xbox platform was headed, and that's why I paid into it last console gen, thinking it'll eventually get better. Having seen no real effort to get proper moderation in there despite being behind a paywall, I've happily returned to playing multiplayer only on PC.

 

[Condom]

Nothing is free.

If you don't want to accept that you can just not buy a console and keep playing on PC where you can't resell the games.

I'd rather play online for free than have the ability to sell my games for the price of a bag of potato chips

And it's a bit easy to just cut off the discussion like that, console exclusives make avoiding consoles all together very hard to do.

 

[sTiTcH AU]

It was more bs when so many features were locked behind gold. Now I believe its only MP that is behind gold which is good, but it took MS way too long to get that right.

Now what Sony need to do is remove the paywall for cloud save games. One night my hard drive failed on my ps4, I had most of my saves in the cloud, had no idea that PS+ sharing on a console did not extend to cloud saves. My wife lost everything and she now refuses to play games on playstation. Shes not a gamer, but enjoyed playing diablo 3 with me.

While that is a rare occurance it is still shitty and something no xbox one owner will ever have to worry about.

 

[Owzers]

I have a PS4 and pay for ps+, part of why I haven't bought an Xbox one or Xbox one s is the second yearly fee I'd be paying for online multi, just doesn't seem worth it even if it's not a huge price, one is enough.

 

[BocoDragon]

I'm an avid gamer, and I don't pay for online and never will.

I'll leave it to the bean counters to figure out if they feel they are leaving some financial opportunity on the table there.

 

[Rizific]

Welp, it was proven that if you lock multiplayer behind a pay wall people will pay to unlock it. On-disc dlc? Yep, people bought that too. Dlc being announced and priced before the game even launched? Yep. "season pass" that includes all future dlc but hasn't been detailed yet? Yeah people love paying for that shit. As long as people keep paying, it's money on the table.

 

[JaseC]

What a bullshit statement people like to throw around. The same kinds of shit cost money on PC when XBL came out too. "Free" online was pretty much just battle.net and typing in IP addresses for quake servers. services like this all cost money back then.

The key difference, though, is that they were optional, so-called "quality of life" services. You didn't need to pay for, say, a GameSpy Arcade subscription to play Quake 2 online, but doing so did confer a few nice perks, most notably voice chat.

 

[Zimbardo]

being primarily a PC gamer, dating back to the early 90s, i always found having to pay for online play on consoles pathetic ....thank microsoft for that one.

last console generation, i owned a ps3, xbox360, and wii ...and i did have an xbox live subscription, for like a year ...mainly just to get some use out of the system and because many of my friends, at the time, were playing on xbox live. i also wanted to see what all the fuss was about, since many people were saying how great Live was at the time, too.

anyway, after awhile i just stopped with the Live sub and stuck with the PC and PS3 ...didn't care if my friends joined me or not (most didn't).

i haven't bothered buying any consoles this gen, and a large part of that is because of the pay to play online requirement, not only from micosoft, but sony now, too.

screw em. i decided just to stick with the PC. most games come out on it nowadays anyway.

long story short ...they lost me as a customer, in large part, because of it ...because there's a damn good chance i would have bought a PS4 if online play was still free.

 

[takriel]

It's time I turned off auto renewal for PS Plus, thanks for reminding me, OP.

 

[VillageBC]

It's time I turned off auto renewal for PS Plus, thanks for reminding me, OP.

I was just thinking the same thing. It just doesn't bring anything to the table anymore worthwhile.

 

[MrCookiepants]

Microsoft really fucked us over with this.

I'm never renewing my PS Plus. Fuck that. Such a waste of money.

 

[capylikesgames]

If you don't want to accept that you can just not buy a console and keep playing on PC where you can't resell the games.

I don't get how the inability to resell on PC is such an awful thing to some people. Some of us don't impulse buy everything we see, and actually wait to find out if a game is up our alley. I don't think I have once sold a game; my entire physical library has some sort of sentimental value to me. By extension, digital only on PC has never really felt like a bad tradeoff to me.

 

[AdventureRacing]

I have never payed for online gaming and have no intentions of doing it in the near future. It's just one more thing that turns me away from console gaming and also adds even more price to consoles making PC gaming more appealing.

It's not just that I can get the same for free on a superior platform (PC). It's also that the free service is generally far superior to what you get on consoles as well.

 

[Tommi84]

I buy physical games for PC just fine. Am I doing it wrong?

It's just so easy to sell it when the game is added to your Steam/Origin account... Oh, wait.

 

[LordKano]

Threads where people are defending paying for a service less functional than others free services are really embarrassing to read.

Especially those who fall for Microsoft and Sony bullshit of renting you crap games that you didn't want to justify paying for their services.

 

[petran79]

And? You can still resell the base game.

Dont console games include a serial number as well that you can activate for online play and other features like extra weapons, colors or costumes?

If you want to play online dont you have to pay an extra resell fee on PSN? 15-20$, dont remember.

 

[SciencePilot]

The servers don't run themselves.

Nothing like this is going to be free. If someone else is offering free online services, it just means they're shuffling the costs around elsewhere. The money's gotta come from somewhere.

 

[Interficium]

Arrogant Sony is back this gen thats why or well arrogant is a bit ridiculous more like greed. Yes companies need to make money but there should be a morality to it.

So what you're saying is that it's about ethics in online gaming services?

 

[Harmondale]

So many MP games I would love to buy for my ps4 feels really bad :/

Was thinking of playing all the SP games now that I want to experience and then go full MP. But at that time it Will be too late people have already moved on to a new generation. So fuck it sony/MS

Wonder how much Money companies like EA and activision are loosing beceause of this. At least 60$ / year from me

As a Huge star wars fan I am so pissed I cant play SW battlefront with all its content without feeding that 70$ per year for ps plus (yes thats the Price over here)

 

[Randam]

I would have bought a PS4, but as soon as they announced that ps+ will be required for online-play at E3 I got my self a nice PC.


and the funny part is, that online-play on ps3 is still free(so it is on Vita) and afaik psn doesn't run any better on ps4, as it does on ps3.

 

[AstroNut325]

We need a third competitor to come in and shake up the industry. That's the only the only way I see this changing.

 

[primasaurus]

Still theres Nintendo, but yeah, consumers didnt resist when MS and Sony normalised it, in fact most make excuses for it

 

[SigSig]

All that PS+ money and PSN still slow

 

[KHlover]

You pay for the convenience of not having to stick a HDMI cable into your PC if you want comfy couch MP.

Spoiler

/s

 

[Nev]

It's a complete scam alright. But you can see in this very thread why it's still a thing, people are defending being extorted by multimillion dolar companies that don't give a shit about them.

Idk about that at all

I know: it absolutely doesn't run any better on PS4. It's still P2P garbage even for exclusive games and PSN downloads are insulting. PS3 and PS4 online is essentially the same in terms of performance and infrastructure, the only difference being one of them is behind a paywall. Meanwhile I'm playing Valve and other PC games on dedicated servers and full speed downloads at the incredible price of free.

It really is embarrassing.

 

[Quentin]

and the funny part is, that online-play on ps3 is still free(so it is on Vita) and afaik psn doesn't run any better on ps4, as it does on ps3.

Idk about that at all

How would u kno anyways if u don't have a PS4? LoL

 

[LordKano]

Idk about that at all

How would u kno anyways if u don't have a PS4? LoL

He's right tho, there's nothing substantial that has changed between PS3 PSN and PS4's. Except that now it costs money.

 

[kraspkibble]

i have both a PC + PS4. i'd really rather not have to pay to play online with my PS4 but really don't have an option as i play exclusives online. i hope nintendo don't charge to play online with the Switch.

 

[Quentin]

He's right tho, there's nothing substantial that has changed between PS3 PSN and PS4's. Except that now it costs money.

Maybe my PS3 was defective because anything online was a chore for me.

 

[Randam]

Idk about that at all

How would u kno anyways if u don't have a PS4? LoL

well, I don't know.
that is why I wrote "afaik".

but I have a ps4 now for singleplayer games and I tried Bloodborne with my free trial.

so is online-play better?
does CoD have less lag on ps4, than on ps3?

does downloading games/patches take less time on PS4?