• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

I find it hard to accept the idea of paying for online multiplayer on consoles

Chobel

Member
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.

Now they don't, but hey, OP, don't pay for online on consoles. If I didn't enjoy GWG/PS+ titles, I wouldn't pay for it either. Anything that isn't going to be dead on PC (Cod style games basically) I always just buy on PC regardless.

What the fuck are you talking about?
 

Quentin

Banned
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?

Don't play COD

But downloading games & patches are much faster than PS3. Not even debatable

Unless u have really shiity internet
 

ramparter

Banned
Lol at some responses, online in Nintendo consoles is free, it was also free in PS3 (not sure abput PS Vita). Guess people need to justify everything.
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.
Hard to argue with that line of reasoning
because it doenst make any sense at all
 

Chobel

Member
I am someone who has actually developed games and has seen what MS provides to devs for "free." It is really nice that they've built a whole infrastructure for online play, such that the devs can basically flip a switch and boom, you have online play in your game. Things like TrueSkill matching happen behind the scenes and they just work. I have no idea how Sony does theirs, but Xbox devs don't have to pay for any of this, so they've pushed the cost onto the players who are actually using the service. It sort of makes sense; the more people that are using it, the more money is coming in to help maintain it.

XBL multiplayer is so seamless and works so well that I have no problem paying for it. I also like the fact that the online play in X360 games from 2005 still works. Namco doesn't have to maintain servers for Ridge Racer 6, as XBL handles everything automatically. Surely, that is worth something. So I pay for it.

I understand why there are people who are at odds with the idea, especially the folks who've been playing on PC for years. But if you're developing a PC game and you want online play in it, you've got to set up servers and you've got to maintain them. Xbox Live negates that need. If you're a dev, and all you want are leaderboards and peer-to-peer online play on Xbox, you don't need to maintain anything. Microsoft runs the servers, the players pay for it, and you get it for free. Interesting how things work...

This is fucking bullshit. Steamworks is free
 

m00h

Banned
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.

What kind of shit did cost money on PC? Please explain. I never had to pay anything to play mp on PC, so it's either I'm getting it wrong, or you're trying to bullshit everyone.
 

Hermii

Member
We can blame Sony for normalizing it even further. Sucks that everybody just accepted it.

We can actually blame consumers for paying for making Xbox Live as profitable as it was on 360. Offcourse the competition is going to adopt a successful business model, I would be surprised if its completely free on Switch.
 

Orca

Member
What kind of shit did cost money on PC? Please explain. I never had to pay anything to play mp on PC, so it's either I'm getting it wrong, or you're trying to bullshit everyone.

Back in the day if you wanted reliable team chat you rented servers. We've come a LONG way since then...kind of, I mean services like Discord/Vent/etc... are still around.

The whole thread is stupid though. I don't think it'd be very well received if a console gamer decided to post about how they just don't understand how people can pay thousands of dollars building a PC just to play games.

Xbox Live/PSN cost money if you want to use it. You get to play online, plus you get discounts, rewards, free games...if it's not worth it to you, don't get it. If it is, fan-fucking-tastic.
 

redcrayon

Member
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.
How do you know that I think all those games are 'crap' and that I didn't want to try them? I rarely even play online on my Vita (and don't have a PS4) but quite like PS+ for introducing me to stuff I wouldn't have bought but then actually end up really enjoying them. It stops me just sticking to my usual rpg roots. The Swapper, Muramasa, Super Meat Boy, Rocketbirds, Guacamelee. I've got a standing mental note to pick them all up when my sub runs out at some point next year, as at this point I've noticed that PS+ games that appeal to me have occurred less often in the last year or so. Doesn't mean I haven't enjoyed it over the last three years though. The PS+ sale discounts alone have also largely covered it for me, but that's dependent on how much stuff you buy from the fortnightly sales, I suppose.

I take your point that other services are free if playing online is all you want, but to me disregarding the hundreds of games offered as 'crap' because it's oh-so convenient for your argument to be able to dismiss it all in a sweeping comment is equally as embarrassing as a blind defence of PS+/XBL.

Ultimately it's an oddball bag of benefits that's going to be worth it for some people and not others. If you only care about online multiplayer then sure, it's hard not to look at Steam and think 'why am I paying £40 a year'.
 
Back in the day if you wanted reliable team chat you rented servers. We've come a LONG way since then...kind of, I mean services like Discord/Vent/etc... are still around.

The whole thread is stupid though. I don't think it'd be very well received if a console gamer decided to post about how they just don't understand how people can pay thousands of dollars building a PC just to play games.

Xbox Live/PSN cost money if you want to use it. You get to play online, plus you get discounts, rewards, free games...if it's not worth it to you, don't get it. If it is, fan-fucking-tastic.

Teamspeak was released in 2001 and was free ever since. It predates XBOX, literally.

The only time I paid for multiplayer on PC was when I bought Kali and that was in 1996 to play Red Alert online on a dial up and console gamers were playing on 16-bit systems back then.

The people here arguing about hidden costs of pc multiplayer etc really have no idea what they are talking about.
 

Zalman

Member
I don't pay for online either. I used to for a bit but I didn't see the benefits. That's why I enjoyed playing PS3 online last gen. And this gen, Wii U online has been great for me. I have zero issues playing Splatoon and Mario Kart online and it's completely free.
 

Orca

Member
Teamspeak was released in 2001 and was free ever since. It predates XBOX, literally.

The only time I paid for multiplayer on PC was when I bought Kali and that was in 1996 to play Red Alert online on a dial up and console gamers were playing on 16-bit systems back then.

The people here arguing about hidden costs of pc multiplayer etc really have no idea what they are talking about.

And Ventrilo was 2002 and renting servers cost money...
 
And Ventrilo was 2002 and renting servers cost money...

What is the point here, really? To re-emphasize, most games had built in microphone and team chat support since forever, and if you wanted party chat even skype had you covered for free, teamviewer was free etc. I never once had to pay for a server to play/speak online on PC. Such a cost does not exist unless you want a professional clan server or something.
 
What is the point here, really? To re-emphasize, most games had built in microphone and team chat support since forever, and if you wanted party chat even skype had you covered for free, teamviewer was free etc. I never once had to pay for a server to play/speak online on PC. Such a cost does not exist unless you want a professional clan server or something.

Back in the old old days, you didn't have that much choice if you had a large guild, like say during EQ/vanilla wow days. You could get free Teamspeak/ventrilo servers but there were limited in slots and you generally had to pay for a bigger servers and kinda had to if you want to do 40man raids+subs in wow or 80+man raids in EQ. I think Roger Wilco(somehow remembered that name as I was typing this, even though I haven't heard about it in like 20years, like ICQ) was free but had a bunch of other issues. Eventually there were better solutions and it became irrelevant, especially nowadays, both because almost everything is free and because games don't have 40 people in the same raid anymore anyway(well other than Wildstar, but that didn't work out too well for them).

The costs were really low though and split amongst guildmates or whatever, so you'd end up paying maybe a dollar, but most likely one guy just bought it for the whole guild/group of guilds on the server and you split it in different rooms for each guilds and such.

Still the whole thing is fairly interesting. Nowadays you can still play F2P mmos and such on PC that have integrated voice chat and obviously a bunch of online traffic to pay for and you don't pay an additional fee other than your internet connection, but playing similar, or literally the same game on PS4/Xbox One requires an additional cost, because, reasons? And when those servers go down because some kids are bored during holidays, you can't play anything, even if the specific servers of the game you're playing aren't down.

I'd like to say it's one of the reasons I don't play multiplayer games on consoles, but while it ensures I won't ever, it's not really the leading reason for me, so I'm not particularily angry or annoyed at the whole system. And there are some good things that come out of this, kinda, like how you can stream/make videos out of your games without having to upload your stuff somewhere first and can share photos and what not. And you still get the free games every month, although from what I've read the quality on these has gone way down over the years so people have been complaining a lot.
 

Orca

Member
What is the point here, really? To re-emphasize, most games had built in microphone and team chat support since forever, and if you wanted party chat even skype had you covered for free, teamviewer was free etc. I never once had to pay for a server to play/speak online on PC. Such a cost does not exist unless you want a professional clan server or something.

The point is that when Xbox Live launched the convenience was worth paying for. It brought a single system for voice chat, matchmaking, etc.. to every single multiplayer game on the Xbox. It wasn't like PC gaming and you didn't have to download a different client, sign up to anything else, there was no 'oops wrong version, let me update Vent/TS' stuff - just click on your friend's gamertag and you'd be in a game playing and talking with no hassles.

Since then, largely due to Steam, PC gaming has become a lot more user-friendly. That pressure might be a factor in why Microsoft and Sony both offer the rewards for subscribing that they do now, to make 'paying for multiplayer' more palatable.
 

GLAMr

Member
I signed up for PS+ before I even knew I needed it for multiplayer. I like the free games.

Also with "free" online multiplayer and services, it's always coming out of somebody's pocket. ISP's, gaming websites and other media companies might run servers for publicity and good will. Sometimes clans and fans host servers out of love for a game and a desire to keep the player base alive. I have several friends who run their own ded servers in the cloud or at home. This is all possible due to free, readily available server software on PC. I don't see console manufacturers ever allowing such an open platform.
 
You probably shouldn't pay to play online multiplayer on consoles then, since the practice has been commonplace for almost 15 years.
Commonplace for xbox users yes. they are to blame. Sony only has paid online on ps4. Atleast you can download 6 free games on PSN eqch month so the 50euro membership a year is not so bad
 

LordRaptor

Member
Also with "free" online multiplayer and services, it's always coming out of somebody's pocket. ISP's, gaming websites and other media companies might run servers for publicity and good will. Sometimes clans and fans host servers out of love for a game and a desire to keep the player base alive. I have several friends who run their own ded servers in the cloud or at home. This is all possible due to free, readily available server software on PC. I don't see console manufacturers ever allowing such an open platform.

The thing is, the vast majority of games aren't on dedicated servers on console.
They're P2P.

It's why the online multiplayer charges come across as borderline scamming the ignorant by implying a service is being provided that does not exist, because a lot of people seem pretty sure their online tithe is paying for better online multiplayer, when it literally cannot be.
 

m00h

Banned
The point is that when Xbox Live launched the convenience was worth paying for. It brought a single system for voice chat, matchmaking, etc.. to every single multiplayer game on the Xbox. It wasn't like PC gaming and you didn't have to download a different client, sign up to anything else, there was no 'oops wrong version, let me update Vent/TS' stuff - just click on your friend's gamertag and you'd be in a game playing and talking with no hassles.

Fact is, multiplayer on PC was free. Fact is, voicechat was free (TS2, free public servers, Counter-Strike had free ingame voicechat since early 2000). You may be right about the convenience factor, but the claims were, that "shit" did const money for PC mp back then, which simply isn't true. Also it was never a disturbing factor for me to use a third party voice client for me, even nowdays most of the people I know online from the times back then prefer TS over any ingame voice solutions.
 

Kayant

Member
Much agreed OP. Basic MP should be free if other platforms can offset/integrate the costs from other things I don't see a reason why console manufacturers cannot do the same and should be a special snowflake outside of just because they can. Just remembering the BS MS used to do locking entertainment apps behind a wall plus a "browser" like seriously how do you justify something like that which don't any of their resources.

One of the reasons am primarily a PC gamer now.
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.
??? What does that have to do with paying for MP? when games are still printed for PC so it definitely isn't for saving on distribution and manufacturing of physical media.
I haven't paid more than 3.50 a month for either psn or Xbox live and it's been worth every penny
Edit: 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
That name and comment is so perfect... 😂😂😂
 

Mechazawa

Member
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.

Now they don't, but hey, OP, don't pay for online on consoles. If I didn't enjoy GWG/PS+ titles, I wouldn't pay for it either. Anything that isn't going to be dead on PC (Cod style games basically) I always just buy on PC regardless.

I can't believe all that money I wasted accessing UT and Enemy Territory server lists!

This post really can't be mocked enough.
 

Asparagus

Member
I'm the same way, I just can't do it. Luckily there's plenty of single player content on consoles so it's not much of an issue for me.
 
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.

what are you talking about? this is totally incorrect lmao
 

butzopower

proud of his butz
Lots of companies/profits these days are valued on recurring revenue, really since Netflix streaming took off. It's why Amazon Prime exists, and I'm guessing why Microsoft and Sony charge for their service. It's not enough to just sell products anymore. Whether you are paying $3 a month or the standard subscription price probably doesn't matter, even, just being a subscriber has value.
 

Dynasty

Member
Blame MS/Bill Gates it was his idea. Sony followed with the PS4. I honestly dont blame Sony because from a bussiness perspective they would be leaving money on the table but it is BS how slow PSN still is at times.

Edit: Online should be free but wont be on consoles because it has become the norm.
 

lazygecko

Member
I was so naive back then and expected XBL to be baby steps towards consoles eventually reaching even ground with PC online standards.

Instead we got Microsoft brazenly trying to lower the bar on PC with GFWL.
 

LordRaptor

Member
I honestly dont blame Sony because from a bussiness perspective they would be leaving money on the table

You're absolutely correct.
I do blame the customers for bending over and taking it though. Particularly the sony fanboys who were super vocal last gen about what a rip off it was last gen, but couldn't drop their panties fast enough when it was Sonys turn to join in.
 
Honestly it's the one thing keeping me from getting one and looking towards switch

Hopefully MS removes it to be more competitive and sony follows. Highly doubt it. Free money so it's on the consumers mostly

Ps3 and my psp were golden without paying for it.
 
There is workarounds too it, I don't pay for ps+ but i still play online MP.

Simply because me and my bro have each others PS4 set as primary, Meaning we get each others games and subs when only 1 person pays.

So for us it's half price games and only 1 sub needed which he has.
 

ngff02

Member
I don't mind paying for multiplayer access. I mean it's unfortunate that we have to but we live in the era of DLC, MMOs, microtransactons.

but what I'm not cool with is games losing it's multiplayer capability, especially if that's all it has to offer. There should be some guarantee - if you pay for online.. you're future proof for multiplayer support.
 
I haven't paid for PlayStation Plus in over a year. Haven't found a reason to sign up again and begrudge paying for it.
This...
Ps3 era ps+ Was quite good, ps4 era ps+ is an amalgama of indie games of which only hai fare decent/good and i would find easily in the humble bundle a feb months later..

Atm for me there is no reason to renew my plus..
 

nOoblet16

Member
Most developers and publishers don't care for it, it's the platform manufacturer that cares for it and the only reason it's not standard practice on PC is because it isn't a platform dictated and controlled by the manufacturer due to the nature of it...if it was you'd have seen it there too. Paying to play online by buying a subscription started on PC afterall.
 
This...
Ps3 era ps+ Was quite good, ps4 era ps+ is an amalgama of indie games of which only hai fare decent/good and i would find easily in the humble bundle a feb months later..

Atm for me there is no reason to renew my plus..

There have been some good games, but I'd rather buy them and not lose the ability to play them if I don't have a subscription.
 

phen0m24

Member
The cost to play online is basically one Starbucks coffee... a month.

I have so much fun playing online with (mostly GAF) friends that the value proposition makes sense to me.

We're talking about pc like it's always been free, but I remember paying for the All Seeing Eye server browser, and chipping in with buddies to "rent" server space in Battlefield 1942, etc...
 

RionaaM

Unconfirmed Member
Back in the day if you wanted reliable team chat you rented servers. We've come a LONG way since then...kind of, I mean services like Discord/Vent/etc... are still around.

The whole thread is stupid though. I don't think it'd be very well received if a console gamer decided to post about how they just don't understand how people can pay thousands of dollars building a PC just to play games.

Xbox Live/PSN cost money if you want to use it. You get to play online, plus you get discounts, rewards, free games...if it's not worth it to you, don't get it. If it is, fan-fucking-tastic.
You don't have to buy a $1000 PC to play games, though. You can do it for far less. I did spend a lot of money because I wanted to run games at high graphics settings, but that's not required. You do need to pay for Live or PS+ if you want to play online on a console, there's no way to avoid that fee. I don't think your comparison of these two situations is valid, with one being mandatory and the other optional.
 

PrimeBeef

Member
Maybe its because I have been playing online multiplayer for free on PC, mobile and handheld, so that makes it harder for me to accept that consoles should be that special thing that you have to pay online to play multiplayer games.

Multiplayer feature is an essential part of a game. Its locking a big part of the game behind a subscription like the PS plus. I feel like this is something that people should be calling them out for.

This is one of the reasons I see no need for a non Nintendo console. I already pay for my internet and I can access multi-player on PC without additional costs.
 
Obviously I'd rather not pay anything but it's so cheap that it's not even worth complaining about. I spend more on a single night at the pub than a year of PS+ costs.
 

Purest 78

Member
I had ps+ on ps3 long before it was a requirement for online. So honestly it being a requirement for online doesn't bother me, I would have had plus anyway.
 

LordRaptor

Member
We're talking about pc like it's always been free, but I remember paying for the All Seeing Eye server browser, and chipping in with buddies to "rent" server space in Battlefield 1942, etc...

You remember paying optional fees that were never compulsory to play online.
That's literally the point.

ASE always had a free version. Playing on dedicated servers never required a fee.
 
Also Wii U, DS, 3DS and I expect Switch to be online too.

I'd be sorely disappointed if Nintendo joined the paid online brigade as well. Its amazing how one company practically brainwashed certain demographic into thinking that paid online mp was better than free online, that too P2P shit. And then another one followed suit because why not?
 

Durante

Member
Can someone explain why Sony and Microsoft needs to charge for online multiplayer?
They don't.

They want to charge for online multiplayer. Because it makes a lot of money.

I understand why there are people who are at odds with the idea, especially the folks who've been playing on PC for years. But if you're developing a PC game and you want online play in it, you've got to set up servers and you've got to maintain them. Xbox Live negates that need. If you're a dev, and all you want are leaderboards and peer-to-peer online play on Xbox, you don't need to maintain anything. Microsoft runs the servers, the players pay for it, and you get it for free. Interesting how things work...
Erm, you should read this.
 
Top Bottom