Man, what nonsense are you talking about? see, this is why people get ripped off, because they are uninformed, there's NO REASON why a game company should EVER charge you for online play, that's like getting charged extra for playing with a second controler in your PS2, would you like that? well, since you don't mind getting charged for online, i'm guessing you wouldn't mind that either, here's some facts:
all of those madden games, racing games, etc. are peer to peer, the company has nothing to do with the connection itself after they hooked players up, that's the ONLY server they have to run, and it costs them next to nothing to set those up, so why the hell would you get charged AGAIN, you allready PAID for your game!
MMORPGS charge you because they keep your data on the game, and the game is 100% dependent on the server, because of it.. they charge you, and guess what? it costs them pennies on the dollar to keep those servers up too, so anyone who is "gladly paying" 15 bucks a month for WoW is gladly getting ripped off, but hey, at least they are actually doing a little work there (in peer to peer games they have to do nothing.), even then it's still a rip off, big time.
in the old days people didn't ever have to get charged for playing THEIR game with THEIR friends, and why would they? they allready bought the damn thing, all people would do is load the game from the server (PC games) and evryone would run from there, warcrat 2 was like this, by the time starcraft came out, blizzard started realizing there was money to be made by not allowing people to play their game with their friends, so they limited the ammount of copies that could be installed on your friends computer for LAN play... (3 per game.. BS.)
then warcraft 3 came out and that option evaporated, but it was ok since nobody played it on LAN anymore and just via the internet, the internet is just a connection.. just like LAN play, why the HELL would you get charged for using it?
the Sony online strategy is $hit, nothing more. why? because it took them 3 years after the release of the PS2 to even start considering one (while sega with the dreamcast had one right of the bat), it took MS 1 year to bring out a service that would be very complete. (more on this later...)
Ok, so Sony either has no clue how to attack this market or doesn't have the resoucres (incredible, such a big company and they can't provide a decent service, all they can do is build hardware...)
Ok, so MS came out with the Xbox live... MS realized they couldn't rely on game companies to set up something as simple as a chat server for each of their games that would also work to find players and hook them up for peer to peer play, this is a very simple thing to do... and yet many companies didn't have a clue how to do this. (taking a look at sony and their games helped. a bit.. only a handful of companies put online support.)
so what did MS do? simple... they made a mIRC like server for ALL games that would also work as an "operator" (connecting the different players for their games.) EXTREMLEY simple, and CHEAP all they had to do is.. well, DO IT, unlike Sony that just sat there...
So, evrything looks great for Xbox live thus far.. but we're forgetting one thing, the games are still peer to peer, so MS isn't really doing much, all they are doing is setting up servers like they would for their AIM service. (which of course is free)
so why are they charging us for online play? they shouldn't and here's why:
Console makers charge royalties to their third party developers, not just a little money, quite a bit of money for having the privilege to publish games on their plataform, so guess what? the xbox live price should be included right there, customers shouldn't be charged for the xbox live service because game publishers are allready paying for it for each copy they sell. And the Customer is allready paying his share when.. well, the pay 50 - 70 bucks for the god damn game, that oughta be enough to cover the price of any mIRC like cheapo server.
Now.. here's what sony should do if they are to stand a chance in the US market in the next generation wars, they should pretty much make a clone service to xbox live (with different features to avoid patent issues which i'm sure exist.). but instead of charging the customer AGAIN after they pay for their game, they should just enable online right of the bat... just like in current games, but instead of having each game company set their "meet" server up they should set them up theemselves.
Sony had 5 years to come up with an online strategy, the reply they would give when asked about online support would be "online gaming is a niche, people are not ready for it.. we want to inovate online gaming, not just enable it, that won't work"
yep, that's the kinda BS you would hear from Sony and Nintendo, no market for it? this is at a time when PC games had 200,000 simultanous users on popular games (for EACH game.). no market for it? the demand was clearly there, they just wouldn't provide, which is a whole different story.
Xbox live owners seem proud to pay for their service. (at least it's not THAT expensive, but MS will raise prices.. and a lot sooner than you think.)
but i can't wait to see their face when they get asked to pay AGAIN for any MMORPG that comes out for it, the fact is... xbox live should be "FREE" (wouldn't be free... because you would STILL need to pay for the game, and afterall... that's all you should ever be charged for playing with your friends, because they don't even pay for your ISP, so the connection is YOURS not theirs!)
