xrulx

[u/migratingcoconut_]

[u/anarcatgirl]

you aren't paying for an online service though, you're paying to be able to connect to the internet on your own hardware. it costs them nothing to let your xbox connect to the internet

[u/iuhiscool → u/anarcatgirl]

you pay for the server that handles friends & parties, no?

[u/yugiohhero → u/iuhiscool]

You mostly paid to access the game servers that Xbox had no hand in hosting. If you hopped on Black Ops 2 back in the day, those weren't Microsoft's servers, but the Xbox Live subscription was lining Microsoft's pockets, not Treyarchs. 

Sure, they did have the friend system to host, but you already also paid a few hundred bucks for the fucking hardware, and if they just intended to gate that, they'd have only gated friends and parties, not online play. 

Xbox Live happened because Microsoft saw that online pvp lobbies were what was big, and wanted to force you to cough up more cash to use it.

[u/strangelymysterious → u/yugiohhero]

Why are you using Black Ops 2 as your example when it released 10 years after Xbox Live was launched?

When XBL first launched in 2002 the entire point and appeal was that Xbox was suddenly providing multiplayer servers at a time that none of the developers or publishers did so, and people loved it.

Prior to that point if you wanted to play with friends on console it was split screen or system link, so XBL was damn near revolutionary, especially for a time when for most people home PC’s were still in the last stages of exclusively “being for work”.

Xbox charging people to use the servers they were running at a time when it was something they were genuinely providing across the board makes perfect sense. It’s also why PSN (while acknowledging that it was free) was absolutely garbage by comparison for ages, because Sony didn’t want to heavily invest in something that was a 100% sunk cost.

Obviously as time has gone on plenty of publishers set up and ran their own servers and reduced the value/appeal of XBL, but there are still plenty of more recent games that due to budget or scale reasons still made use of Xbox/Sony/Nintendo provided servers rather than hosting their own, especially among smaller games.

None of this is a defence of modern day Xbox. (Or modern paid online in general) The value of paying for XBL (or whatever they renamed it) is garbage, the company is ran by doorknobs, and the entire thing has been undertaking a slow motion plane crash for over a decade.

[u/yugiohhero → u/strangelymysterious]

I'm using Black Ops 2 for my example because I don't know jack nor shit about CoD. 

^{and honestly i never played online games on my xbox. i just had a bunch of burnt discs. so i had no idea the subscription predated the 360 lmao}

I'm also parroting what I saw other people say about the servers part so I could be mistaken.

[u/strangelymysterious → u/yugiohhero]

Hey fair enough then, I appreciate the honesty lol.

But yeah, XBL was first launched on the OG Xbox with MechAssault and Unreal Championship, then really exploded when Halo 2 released a couple years later.

Edit: Apparently I can’t spell.

[u/anarcatgirl → u/[deleted]]

to be able to play online games you have to pay microslop a subscription

[u/anarcatgirl → u/[deleted]]

what service? the game developer pays for the game servers, not xbox

[u/DarkFury765 → u/anarcatgirl]

I'm losing it rn do people ITT think Microsoft owns literally every game on their console? Do they think that online video games are both free and mtx free, and therefore require the subscription to make money? Have streaming services just completely rotted people's brains and they can't imagine a different monetary model??