Yeah. People very much forget how horrible most online multiplayer infrastructure was back in the early 2000s. Voice chat was a case where you used teamspeak/ventrillo for atrocious quality audio that optimally depended on using an actual phone line in conjunction or it just never worked. Messaging was basically xfire or AIM. And servers were generally listen servers that someone in your clan left running in the background when they forgot about it.
Live provided a messaging system people would actually use and tapped into MS infrastructure for voice chat that actually worked… which was great for playing with your friends and learning all new slurs when you had it on in a pub. Game servers themselves were still generally all listen servers but that changed over time.
These days? Discord has a LOT of problems but it actually works and is a much more universal platform. Server hosting infrastructure is such that there isn’t really a point in paying the platform for it. And EVERYTHING needs to be social media for people to not whinge so having a messaging system loses its value.
But also… have any of the consoles really pushed the online infrastructure as why you pay for premium? Okay, Nintendo have but they REALLY shouldn’t considering what they are offering. It is all about the IGC and has been since Sony got involved as part of the PSN hack.
Well, it got you a better experience than whatever it was Sony were doing at the time, which was a weird ethernet adapter, and seemingly every game reinventing the idea of how online should work.
I don’t think it ever needed to be charged for, it just needed to be designed.
I only ever paid for it once they started giving away games with it. Multiplayer alone wasn’t worth it to me.
Hosting servers isn’t free. Someone, somewhere, is paying for it. It’s easy to forget that that someone used to be advertisers via GameSpy for so many games. Now, on PC, you’re paying for it via digital purchases on the same store that hosts the servers.
It wasn’t always worth it back then, hence why it was supported with ads or a subscription. Did you ever patch your game back then? Even that was subsidized by ads; the devs didn’t host the patch files themselves in most cases. Live services, which are unfortunately all too often synonymous with online games, host their own servers, and you’re paying for them with microtransactions. If a game uses the platform’s matchmaking for peer to peer multiplayer, which was just about all of them on Xbox Live in its early days, then you’re using the servers your subscription was paying for. Even today, many still use these features. But you’re correct that the ones not using these features are still locked behind that subscription on consoles unless they’re free to play.
These days? I dont mind it. With the offering of the 3 games a month, it’s been fine. As someone who’s gotten old and barely plays anything, it’s nice only spending the yearly subscription and getting up to 36 games a year. Sure, not all are great, but there have been plenty of big games offered that let me play the big stuff I missed and probably still wouldn’t pay $20-$30 for.
A good example would be Alan Wake 2 this month. Really wanted to play it but couldn’t really bring myself to buy it.
Seems worse to me than humble choice which you don’t need to play online, so you can just buy the months you like to get 8 games in your library as opposed to it being tied to multiplayer.
Then there’s Epic which gives away games every month without having to spend any money and still retain multiplayer access.
I used to do humble years ago, then I remember something changed and the selections were never that good. It’s been a while since I found one worth buying. I also fo Epic every week. I have been for about 3 or 4 years now.
Dang, I missed that. Honestly, I haven’t looked much at humble in years. If thats what they are still pushing, then I will definitely start following again. Thanks for the heads up.
Really, I think multiplayer should be free (it’s not like multiplayer games don’t nickel and dime you on top of that anyway) and the game subscription peeled out of it. I’m only interested in the “free” games anyway.
I nearly said “20” but then realized I’m almost twice that old myself and the NES is a couple years older than me. Friggin’ millennials. We’re ruining the aging industry too.
IDK, MS really went all the way with backwards compatibility. They literally built emulators for the 360 and OG Xbox in order to let people play old games using old disks they already owned.
I’d be shocked if they didn’t stay committed to this.
The rumored Series X refresh doesn’t have a disk drive.
It’d be hard for Microsoft to remain committed to game preservation in that way without them.
To me, this sounds more like they’re looking at Nintendo’s virtual store playbook and wondering how many times they can sell the same games to their customer base.
Surely it will help them reclaim their spot as the de facto fighting game console in a scene where many people use unlicenced controllers with Brook boards.
Not really, just let the game devs chose when to request that the console enforces stricter verification of accessories and otherwise just allow whatever
But if someone wants to do an arcade controller, this changes almost nothing. Just solder the wires on the contact pads on an official Xbox controller. Impossible to detect via software
Even the turbo button can be done, with an intermediate IC that transforms the signal from the button to be intermittent
the biggest problem plaguing the STALKER remasters is a strange bug that seems to cause the games to render at a resolution lower than what you set it as and then upscale it improperly, resulting in blurry, muddy visuals that persist even if you turn settings like AMD FSR Super Resolution and depth of field off.
Okay that’s… that’s not great, but should be fixable in a patch surely?
Another highly contentious change that’s drawn the ire of fans is the complete removal of everything Russian or related to the Soviet Union, including all Russian voice acting and localization, the use of Soviet rubles as in-game currency, and even every Soviet sign, statue, and landmark present in the real-world Chernobyl Exclusion Zone that were included in the original titles.
The versimilitude and basis in real world locations was a massive part of what made the originals so great, you can’t just scrub that off. I empathize with them, and I am personally firmly on the side of Ukraine but this sits really poorly with me.
The Zone’s supernatural mysteries are layered over recognizable pieces of Soviet iconography and rusting Soviet technology is a huge part of what gives STALKER its atmospheric vibe, and the absence of beloved voice lines like “Cheeki breeki iv damke!” just feels…wrong
Yeah I’m not touching these abominations. They even removed Cheeki Breeki? The single most recognisable thing in their games, the most prevalent and beloved meme?
But just remember that during the 360/PS3 era when MS were in the lead, it was Sony trying to by all consumer friendly, advocating online cross play and having free online service.
they have to find new ways of competing for business
Yeah haha. Regrettably doing right by the consumers because a competitor is.
Although I would not be surprised if they find a way to make a money pit out of it. (Such as not being chill like Sony and releasing on steam, forcing users on to the Windows store)
I’m still glad I paid for it when it was a good deal. It’s not like I was committed. The unsubscribe button is pretty easy, and I don’t need to play a lot of those singleplayer games anymore.
Does that include xbox gamepass core customers? Because that’s basically an entirely different service, and it’s also something you’d expect a very high adoption rate of among Xbox console owners, given the platform’s historical emphasis on multiplayer games. There’s also rather a lot of people who stacked many months of gamepass for quite cheap.
While the platform has certainly seen some success, it’s hardly in a dominant position, so making moves that make the value proposition of the service look worse is surprising.
I did no such thing lol. People had to be surprised by this turn of events based on the response to it in this very thread. Whether or not people are forced to continue paying for it has nothing to do with anything I said, speaking of straw men.
I got a ton of hate online when they announced the Activision deal and I said that though they’d get COD for “free” but they would almost immediately start hiking the price a lot. This has been obvious but some people refuse to think MS wasn’t going to try and recoup their $70B?
Eh, this is a case of them offering a better deal than actually ever made sense, because they expected the volume of subscribers to make up for it, but that never manifested.
They don’t; there was an internal tech demo that never went anywhere but was spread around online a few months ago with a bunch of misinformation that Microsoft was preparing to fight the Steam Deck head on.
Xbox takes a 30% cut from devs, has ads on its console and wants to charge a subscription for online gaming (now raising its price by 25%). Can’t triple dip like this, Microsoft.
Haven’t renewed PS Plus either since its price hike. Just gonna play disc games on my PS5 till the end of its lifespan.
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