Could Microsoft potentially make more money from making gold free?

[EamoMcK]

One of the most annoying things about the xbox is the money us xbox users pay so that we can play online and many of us have been hoping that it will become free so i was thinking could they not make more money through making it free?
I think this for a few reasons.
1. Many people buy the ps3 instead of the xbox because of having to pay to play online so if they made it free i would predict that they would sell alot more xbox consoles.
2. Due to the selling of more game consoles more people would be buying games which would bring in more money from them.
3. With more people on XBL it is likely that more people will be buying mricrosoft points to spend in the marketplace and so they would make more money from this.
4. With free live people would no longer be making new accounts in order to get a month of playing for free and so the cost of maintaining these accounts would be reduced.

In conclusion i would like to say that i do not know how much more money would be made but i suspect it would be alot more than the money they currently get which would benefit both them and it would benefit us in 2 ways. We dont have to pay for live and XBL would be improved making both xbox customers and microsoft happy, What do you think???

 

[Fonseca]

Less money definitely.

 

[Pryomancer]

I know I'd actually bother to hook up my Xbox again if Live was free.

 

[vbetts]

With the Xbox starting off with paid subscription for online play, at this point no. If they started off free, then of course. Or made it cheaper. But most people with 360s have a gold account.

 

[El Blacksheep]

Most console makers lose money on the price of the console and make up the lost revenue in game sales, peripherals, and in M$'s case subscriptions and M$ points.

 

[i VTAK]

With the Xbox starting off with paid subscription for online play, at this point no. If they started off free, then of course. Or made it cheaper. But most people with 360s have a gold account.

This^^^


If they made it free now, there would be a ton of pissed off people wanting refunds for XBL that they paid for. Online XBOX is far better than PS3 because it costs money.

 

[omfgwtflawl]

Think about it, when Mw2 came out whose servers went down from all the traffic? PSN's did. Why? It's free, and not as watched or monitored as XBL's servers. If XBL goes down, it's for a good reason, and not because of high traffic. Why? I think anyone who pays for XBL would more than likely be pissed if they couldn't play for what they paid for. amirite?1/1/1?!!11?

 

[NYCHitman1]

If you buy your 13 month cards off eBay like I do then you won't have a problem with paying $30-35 USD compared to $55 normally and get the best online gaming experience available on a console. Sure PSN is free but that doesn't mean it's good. PSN won't be free for much longer, that much I can guarantee.

 

[ballisticn8]

If you buy your 13 month cards off eBay like I do then you won't have a problem with paying $30-35 USD compared to $55 normally and get the best online gaming experience available on a console. Sure PSN is free but that doesn't mean it's good. PSN won't be free for much longer, that much I can guarantee.

+1

10 chars...

 

[rwZephyr]

If you buy your 13 month cards off eBay like I do then you won't have a problem with paying $30-35 USD compared to $55 normally and get the best online gaming experience available on a console. Sure PSN is free but that doesn't mean it's good. PSN won't be free for much longer, that much I can guarantee.

Exactly I'm willing to pay 60$ a year, for the superior online play, the only time I play online on my ps3 is when I want to play exclusive games like mag. I mean people whine about spending that much a year (5 dollars a month... 16 cents a day, and worth every penny) in all reality if you can drop that much money on a game then spending that every year is miniscule.

Sent from my X10a using Tapatalk

 

[NYCHitman1]

Exactly I'm willing to pay 60$ a year, for the superior online play, the only time I play online on my ps3 is when I want to play exclusive games like mag. I mean people whine about spending that much a year (5 dollars a month... 16 cents a day, and worth every penny) in all reality if you can drop that much money on a game then spending that every year is miniscule.

Sent from my X10a using Tapatalk

So true. +1

 

[Jeted]

Exactly I'm willing to pay 60$ a year, for the superior online play, the only time I play online on my ps3 is when I want to play exclusive games like mag. I mean people whine about spending that much a year (5 dollars a month... 16 cents a day, and worth every penny) in all reality if you can drop that much money on a game then spending that every year is miniscule.

Sent from my X10a using Tapatalk

Could not agree more. Xbox provides a much better quality of time online, there is times where you do get bad ping, with bad match ups now and then, but that's basically the game devs problem and not a live problem.

 

[mgillespie]

Microsoft have fooled gamers into thinking that Xbox live offers something extra over free PSN (which is totally untrue these days). There are enough brainwashed users that believe them and will continue to pay, when Microsoft spin things like "the price of a cup of coffee a day" and such.

When I used to have a XBox (before it failed for the 4th time), online play was at best laggy on the P2P system, and dependant upon the best connection of the slowest player.

At least PS3 uses dedicated servers for PS3 exclusives, and services like Vidzone, Home, Playstation Video service, iPlayer all offer so much more than my XBox ever offered, even on the gold service, and of course PS3 offers all that, for free.

Also, anyone that thinks what PSN currently offers for free (online gaming, messaging, party chat etc) won't remain free, is wrong, it's already been confirmed there are additional premium services coming, but what is free today will remain free.

http://www.qj.net/psp/news/kaz-hirai-current-psn-services-will-remain-free.html

 

[mkeath]

Think about it, when Mw2 came out whose servers went down from all the traffic? PSN's did. Why? It's free, and not as watched or monitored as XBL's servers. If XBL goes down, it's for a good reason, and not because of high traffic. Why? I think anyone who pays for XBL would more than likely be pissed if they couldn't play for what they paid for. amirite?1/1/1?!!11?

MS's servers don't go down because they are a software company. They are a really good software company. Same reason why Sony's consoles have really reliable hardware.

 

[mgillespie]

MS's servers don't go down because they are a software company. They are a really good software company. Same reason why Sony's consoles have really reliable hardware.

We have both consoles in our household (the Xbox does not get much love these days, it's mostly PS3 gaming now), however Microsoft's service has MUCH more downtime that I see from PSN, which is rarely down.

Who can forget the 2 week Xbox Live xmas outage, that Microsoft managed to spin as a positive..

Xbox Live suffers holiday hangover - News at GameSpot
Xbox Live suffering from major outage. On Christmas weekend. Ouch. -- Engadget

 

[NYCHitman1]

Microsoft have fooled gamers into thinking that Xbox live offers something extra over free PSN (which is totally untrue these days). There are enough brainwashed users that believe them and will continue to pay, when Microsoft spin things like "the price of a cup of coffee a day" and such.

When I used to have a XBox (before it failed for the 4th time), online play was at best laggy on the P2P system, and dependant upon the best connection of the slowest player.

At least PS3 uses dedicated servers for PS3 exclusives, and services like Vidzone, Home, Playstation Video service, iPlayer all offer so much more than my XBox ever offered, even on the gold service, and of course PS3 offers all that, for free.

Also, anyone that thinks what PSN currently offers for free (online gaming, messaging, party chat etc) won't remain free, is wrong, it's already been confirmed there are additional premium services coming, but what is free today will remain free.

Kaz Hirai: current PSN services will remain free

You are surely entitled to your opinion. Being a previous owner of a PS3, I can tell you that the online experience is terrible in comparison to the 360. The skill level of players is much worse and you claim there is no lag on servers but I will testify that there is plenty of lag on PS3 online servers to go around. I've witnessed more downtime on PS3 than I have ever been a part of since swapping over to my 360 full-time.

I just hate to think you trash talk Microsoft b/c you are a Sony fanboy.

 

[mgillespie]

You are surely entitled to your opinion. Being a previous owner of a PS3, I can tell you that the online experience is terrible in comparison to the 360. The skill level of players is much worse and you claim there is no lag on servers but I will testify that there is plenty of lag on PS3 online servers to go around. I've witnessed more downtime on PS3 than I have ever been a part of since swapping over to my 360 full-time.

I just hate to think you trash talk Microsoft b/c you are a Sony fanboy.

I used to have both systems, and the Xbox was truly an abysmal experience (console hardware AND Xbox Live). It's gotten worse, with more lag, more adverts and more cost, I also found that Xbox Live was full of 12yr old kids screaming homophobic and racist abuse into headsets in every online game I played.

I much prefer PSN gaming, it's lag-free, it's free and has better features (and PSN store has a MUCH higher quality of titles for download).

Having used both, I really can't understand how ANYONE can think Xbox Live offers value for money, with the amount of adverts Microsoft thrown at users, Microsoft should be offering it for free, (let alone the fact it costs Microsoft very little to run, because it's a server-less P2P network).

I'm wondering how old your PSN experience was? What was your PSN username?

 

[Snow_Fox]

Microsoft wouldn't really make up anything.

55$ a year isn't a lot (it is still more than I'm willing to pay when computers offer FREE service BETTER than xbox)

However, 55$ is low enough that most people are still willing to pay for it, and because xbox was out for so long before other consoles, it got enough of a user base that it really didn't matter what other people had.

I personally waited on ps3.. not a big fan of xbox.. probably never will be.. Its a great console.. just no exclusives that I want to play.

With that said, I find it funny people think that because you pay for xbox, it is automatically better than ps3. p2p is suppose to be free.

 

[NYCHitman1]

I used to have both systems, and the Xbox was truly an abysmal experience (console hardware AND Xbox Live). It's gotten worse, with more lag, more adverts and more cost, I also found that Xbox Live was full of 12yr old kids screaming homophobic and racist abuse into headsets in every online game I played.

I much prefer PSN gaming, it's lag-free, it's free and has better features (and PSN store has a MUCH higher quality of titles for download).

Having used both, I really can't understand how ANYONE can think Xbox Live offers value for money, with the amount of adverts Microsoft thrown at users, Microsoft should be offering it for free, (let alone the fact it costs Microsoft very little to run, because it's a server-less P2P network).

I'm wondering how old your PSN experience was? What was your PSN username?

I will certainly give you the fact that the 360's player base is a much lower age range than the PS3's but you can easily mute those that you decide you don't want to hear whine. I don't think either system offers something better than the other in terms of content downloads and etc. Microsoft has made sure that certain DLC has remained exclusive and vice versa. Who is really to determine how much "better quality" the downloads are? It all plays the same.

I cannot argue w/ you about lag b/c I experience none but that's because I have an incredible connection from my ISP.

Perhaps my distaste comes from me purchasing my PS3 at release and it really was no competition since it lacked a vast game library. I do not watch any blu-ray movies so it didn't make much sense for me to keep the console.

My PSN tag was NYCHitman1.. same as my tag for XBL (and every online gaming I've ever been a part of)

PS
I still think the PS3 is superior hardware wise but game library wise.. ehhhh not so much (which is why we play these silly games after all)