thoughthead

A few days ago I had to renew my Xbox Live Gold Subscription. I honestly don’t play online very often. I’m really more of an off-line gamer but I keep the subscription around for the occasional game among friends, and more recently for when achievements call for it. I see a lot of people scoff at the subscription fee for Xbox Live; why pay when other platforms offer online gaming for free? If you had asked me if paying for an Xbox Live subscription was worth it about 2 years ago I would have responded with a resounding HELL NO! At this point however, if posed the same question I’d would assure you, it’s worth every last penny.

First lets look at what the actual costs are, a 12+1 (that’s 13 for the mathematically impaired) month subscription card runs $49.95 at any fine video game retailer; potentially less if you shop around. $49.95/13months = $3.84 a month. Anyone with an IQ larger than that of a wet paper bag should be able to deduce this themselves however it never ceases to amaze me how many people think the price for this service is somehow $15 a month per game, or $120 a year, or some other strange self-fabricated pricing myth. You don’t even need a credit card, you may pay with which ever means your retailer accepts.

Ok so if you’re spending $3.84 a month, what do you actually get? In the Xbox 1 days the entirety of the Xbox Live service was covered under that fee, you either paid your subscription fees or you didn’t connect to Xbox Live AT ALL, in any way, shape or form. Since the launch of the Xbox 360 90%+ of the Xbox Live services are available free under the title “Xbox Live Silver”, This includes access to game and console updates, access to the marketplace where you can download new game content, game demos, trailers, music, movies, tv shows, etc. It gives you a friends list that can be accessed anytime in any game, on any console, or even online, and you can text, picture, or voice message or chat with anyone on that list. You can also view and leave feedback about other users, as well as keeping track of your in-game accomplishments through achievements, gamerscore, and leaderboards. That’s all free (as in beer). So what are you paying $3.84 a month for? The pay version of the service is now under the title of “Xbox Live Gold” which on top of everything offered in the Silver service gives you access to two additional items video chat, and online multiplayer. Obviously Online multiplayer is the meat and potatoes of any online gaming service but I’m going over this again for those whom in addition to not knowing the price seem to also not fully understand what it includes.

Without hesitation I’d claim that Xbox Live on the Xbox 360 is far and wide superior to the version available on the Xbox 1. I believe most who have played both would agree with me; however, in terms of cost some might argue that the paying members of the Xbox 360′s Xbox Live have had their service devalued. Since most of the services features are now being offered for free. I’ve gone back and forth on this one myself. You certainly are paying the same price for less features now, though I think putting those features in a free version of the service is benificial to everyone, paying members included. Now I can communicate with friends who have the console but don’t have an interest in online gaming. By giving others part of the service for free it has improved my gaming experience by increasing the number of people I can communicate with through the console. As for the non-paying members it has far and wide improved their place in the online gaming community.
I’ve found that there are actually quite a few benefits to having a pay service.

1. The servers are run by Microsoft and not by the game’s publisher/developer. This ensures a more reliable connection to the server, less laggy gameplay, and when something goes wrong it gets fixed immediately. In terms of the server quality and supporting staff, you know where you money went.
2. Online games will always be online, often times older online games will have their official server support disappear, the developer/publisher will decides they’re loosing more money running the free server then they are in game sales and simply drop support. The Oldest Xbox Live games can still be played today and will still be supported as long as Xbox Live is around.
3. A monetary value on an account helps keep people in line. If you start spouting off obscenities online, or team-killing, etc. and you get your account banned, On Xbox Live you’ll have to pay for a whole new $50 annual subscription to get back on. With a free service you can keep creating new accounts and loose nothing by getting booted. There’s no retribution for those that abuse free systems.
4. With Microsoft managing the online servers and using it as a source of income it’s in their best interests to have as many games as possible support online gameplay. They’ll be adding those features into their own games as well as encouraging 3rd parties to support online gaming features. If you look at last generation, while the Xbox 1′s library was fairly small overall a substantial portion of the games supported Xbox Live, and that number dwarfed the games that supported online play on both the PS2 and Gamecube. So far that tradition has carried over onto the 360 where a vast majority of games on the 360 support multiplayer over Xbox Live. And while Sony seems to be off to a decent start with the PS3′s online multiplayer support, Nintendo’s Wii has a big fat ZERO so far in terms of games that can be played online, which I find to be terribly disappointing.

There are however, pitfalls to a pay service as well, and I’m not talking about cost (besides if you consider $3.84 a month too much for a quality online gaming experience you have no business playing video games). For instance since online multiplayer is being pushed by Microsoft, some developers have started neglecting other multiplayer aspects of gameplay, split-screen gaming, particularly 4 player split-screen gaming is becoming increasingly harder to come by, some titles have dropped local multiplayer altogether. Another multiplayer option that I enjoyed is System Link, but again this is becoming increasingly scarce. You could blame any number of people for this but the root of the matter is that enough attention has been put on online mulitplayer that when crunch time hits and a game needs to be trimmed down to achieve deadlines features like system link and various local multiplayer options get hit with the ax before online multiplayer does.

Another pitfall is the hindrance of cross-platform muliplayer, while this is rarely seen to begin with, if a game is to support online multiplayer across multiple platforms all of those platforms need to connect through the same servers. With Xbox Live having it’s own unique servers it limits cross platform multiplayer to the Microsoft family of gaming platforms. So (with the exception of MMOs) it would be difficult to get Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft console’s playing with each other. This is getting better though as Microsoft is extending the Xbox Live service onto PCs through Live Anywhere. Honestly I’d love it if the “Live” service became it’s own entity and extended onto Nintendo and Sony consoles, I’d be willing to pay a higher subscription fee for that privilege, though I think that’s a dream that will never come to pass. Business politics are simply too thick in the video game industry to get a good solid, unified online platform that everyone could enjoy.

One thing that does bother me about the Xbox Live service is how it works with EA brand games. Unlike other games on Xbox Live EA games are run on EA servers. Because of this some of those games can even play cross platform with Sony consoles. EA didn’t support Xbox Live for quite some time because they wanted full control over their own game servers, it wasn’t until Microsoft allowed EA to use their own servers and only connect under the guise of Xbox Live that Xbox owners were able to play EA games online. If that’s how they want to do things then fine, but to use the Online multiplayer features of these games you are still required to pay the Xbox Live subscription fee. I find it rather curious that we’re required to pay Microsoft for a service that is being delivered by EA… don’t you? This is particularly troubling on the Xbox 360 where the “wrapper” as it were is free through the silver service, at least on the Xbox 1 you were still paying for things like the friends list and messaging.

Most of what I’ve discussed here is old news, but it still confounds me that people complain about the pittance that is the cost of Xbox Live Gold, I’m even further baffled by the people who spout off inaccuracies about what it supports, or what it costs like their some kind of expert on the subject. I’ve played games online, I played PC games online, I played my SegaTV, NetLink, and SegaNet way back in the day on the Genesis, Saturn, and Dreamcast respectively I have a modem on my PS2 and on My Gamecube, and played with what little online gaming they offered, I own a Wii, and I’ve even put in some quality time with the Playstation3′s offerings. Without a doubt Xbox Live on the Xbox 360 is what online gaming SHOULD BE, it’s not without it’s faults, but when compared to the alternatives available it’s like the president of Mensa stepped onto a short bus. Sony’s latest offerings are far and wide superior to what they had available on the PS2, but they’re still slightly below the level Xbox Live was at when it launched about five years ago. I’m sure their service will evolve and get better, as will Nintendo’s. It took Xbox Live some time to become as good as it is today, though while Sony’s and Nintendo’s services evolve so will Xbox Live, and without any real monetary incentive I feel it would be difficult for them to throw enough manpower behind their services to really catch-up with Xbox Live evolving at the pace it is.
If you own an Xbox or Xbox 360 you owe it to yourself to purchase a subscription to Xbox Live, or at very least sign up for the Silver service. The subscription is a drop in the bucket of your game budget for what you get, and in the grand scheme of things you get what you pay for.