Working Title 09.06.10: Mini-Rant on Xbox Live Price Bump

Posted by Jordan Williams on 09.06.2010

It's Labor Day! Unfortunately for me my drinking started two days early so you get a Hangover Rant about the new Xbox Live price raise. Why does it seem no one cares about it? What exactly are WE getting out of the deal here?

Welcome to the #1 Column to say...YES, YOU FUCKERS. YOU LAUGHED BUT I TOLD YOU DUKE NUKEM FOREVER IS COMING OUT. WORKING TITLE GAME OF THE YEAR 2011. FUCK WHATEVER ELSE COMES OUT THAT YEAR. ALWAYS BET ON MOTHER. FUCKING. DUKE.

Anyway, I hope all of you guys are enjoying your long weekend (in the states anyway) I am currently hung over as shit right now typing this on a Sunday so needless to say this is going to be a pretty goddamn short column. Since I am on my new cycle of picking the biggest news story of the week and seeing what's wrong and/or right with it I decided to take on something that is sort of weird. Usually when news drops that gamers have to pay more money for something they already have there is a call to arms and all sorts of online petitions and what not. So when Microsoft announced that Xbox Live was going to get a 10 dollar increase in November...no one said a thing. There were rumblings and bubbling in the internet but not a widespread anger wave like usual.

What gives? Have we finally hit the point of "Fuck it" where we don't care anymore? Or is the price bump actually justified? Maybe Microsoft has provided a good enough service for us that we should just accept the price bump. Fuck if I know...but I am on a belly full of rum and beer and I think pretty soon the whiskey shits are going to kick in. So let's just get the rant out of the way and be done with it, eh?



Working Title Hangover Edition: The Xbox Live Price Jump Mini-Rant

It's no secret that Xbox Live is successful, even before PSN came onto the picture Xbox Live was the premier console internet experience, it took all of the confusion and hassle away from previous attempts like the Dreamcast online services. But even back on the old Xbox people complained that we were paying for a service that 'should have been free'. But as much as they complained...they still paid for it. When the Xbox 360 launched with its tier services people got a bigger choice of what they want...but the main selling point of online multiplayer was still behind a pay gate.

PSN followed up and allowed online service for free, ditto for the Nintendo Wii which even further sparked the whole "What are we paying for" debate, but as time went on the debate eventually died down. But then Microsoft had to go and rile up everyone with this price bump business, and while I said the majority of the internet's isn't caring, for those that are it does just seems sort of weird.

What has Microsoft done to justify this?

The short answer? Not a damn thing. Xbox Live is a good service; there is no getting around that. But the service itself is...not worth 60 dollars year they want starting in November. At its core Xbox Live is simply a peer-to-peer connection. Most of the games are run on their own servers and all Xbox Live is doing is connecting you directly to the other players. Now the network is big and they do offer things like DLC and Demos and videos...but so does Sony, a company not NEARLY as rich as Microsoft yet they can somehow do it for free. Xbox Live Gold just seems like a pay gate after awhile.

And then they want 10 dollars more? Just what has Microsoft done to warrant it? Since XBL's launch we have gotten ads, including talking ads, Netflix which we have to pay to access, even if we have a Netflix subscription, Facebook and Twitter, FREE services we have to pay to access, Last.fm...another free service we have to pay to access. Yet they have killed off the original XBL, we still have a friend limit of 99 and we STILL can't do stuff that was promised FOUR YEARS AGO like live streaming of games to one another. So where is this extra 10 dollars factoring in? Are the servers really that overloaded with Modern Warfare players? Even if it was it wouldn't make too much of a difference because seeing as XBL is a peer to peer connection service and not a lot of it is actually controlled on Microsoft's end.

Yet after all of that they want to raise the price of the service, which even though it has become a mantra for Sony fanboys and PC purists to just bash and throw heat at Microsoft...the service SHOULD be free. Why is no one else going apeshit about this? Microsoft promises that the bump is in order to make XBL the best gaming service out there and that's all well and good...but why not charge us THEN instead of now? They haven't shown us an inkling of ANYTHING that would tell us that Xbox Live is going to get better or give us not services, so why are we rolling over and allowing them to raise the price?

Give us better connectivity; give Gold members something more than just online multiplayer to have. I've been with XBL for a long time and I can honestly say I have never used any of the 'gold' perks outside of Netflix and even then I usually just have that stream though my TV. The price bump is not justified and on the surface it looks like a money grab of the highest order. All of the 'recent' money grabs have had upsides and downsides. The Online Pass from EA and THQ REALLY doesn't hurt anyone except for the people who buy the game new. Pre-LC (thanks Giant Bomb) sucks ass, but most of the time you are really not missing out on anything game changing. Hell, even the DRM shit on PC's has an upside!

But this...where's the upside here? It sounds whiney, it sounds bratty, and it sounds like the same 'Gamer Sense of Entitlement" I always rag on so much but as someone who tries to find the good side of EVERYHING from fucking Bobby Kotick to The Virtual Boy...I don't see the good side here! We are paying more for the same service!

There's ways they can fix this though. What about that Xbox Live Platinum idea that is always kicked around? Give us an XBL service that allows us to kill off Ads, add more people to our friends list and give us some perks like PSN Plus. Give us...SOMETHING.

Now you could (and some will) argue that XBL doesn't NEED to provide us with anything more, we are already getting enough bang for our buck with the online play which is actually pretty goddamned good. If that's case...why not just have a tier of Xbox Live that allows online play? Let's just face the facts here; hardly anyone out there is paying 50 dollars a year for Xbox Live just to use Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, or Last.fm. They are paying to play online, so let them just pay for that. You want to use all of the other useless stuff? Go right ahead and add it to your account for another 3 dollars a month or something. That way you get the people who really DO want to pay for the service they want to use paying for it the way they want. I'm sure if I paid say 35 for XBL that allowed Online Play, Netflix Access and an Expanded Friends List I would be a lot happier with the service overall.

Something has to be either done or shown by Microsoft to justify this price jump because if they get away with it THIS time and no one causes a stir then there is nothing stopping them from boosting prices on other things. Notice how 1200 is the new 800 for DLC? 1500 point 'Big Name' XBLA games? Not to get all analytic but look how well the Modern Warfare Map Packs sold at 15 bucks? The longer we as a whole show them that they can get away with it, the less resistance there will be when they do new rollouts.

Now hopefully I'm wrong and there is a big change coming to Xbox Live soon that will make this 10 dollar bump look like it is worth something, but...I'm not too hopeful on that front. At least Amazon.com is still selling discounted cards.

For now.

---

And there you have it, a lazy super special Labor Day rant from us (me) here at Working Title. I promise you all that you'll get a full sized column next Monday, but for now get back to BBQing, drinking, and doing whatever the hell else. I'll be in the bathroom counting the titles on the floor.


Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams...and I am serious when I say Duke Nukem Forever will be GOTY 2011.