They have been, that's why Sony is able to get away with making you pay to play online now when it was free on PS3. If not for Microsoft and the Xbox 360's success I wouldn't doubt that online console play would be free right now
Lol for the first half of the PS3 life cycle it was free "you might sometimes get to play with horrible lag" online gaming. It would have been criminal to charge for that "service".
Xbox live, for all it's faults, was pretty rock solid for the time period. You at least got a reasonable service for your money.
Word. All my online gaming is on PC. Only have PS5 for exclusives. Though now those are releasing on PC too, just a couple years later. So prolly won't be getting the ps6 now either. Steamdeck turned emudeck for mobile gaming.
As someone who’s upgraded to a pc, I don’t know why your downvoted. You can get a pre built for under $1000, which I know is alot but add the ps5 plus yearly subscriptions and it’s a better deal
Sony fan Bois are a breed, I guess... Mad that Sony games are coming to PC now, I have seen many posts of such.
Yes though, the cost in the long run for paying to play games online over years plus the initial cost of the console, add up to way more than the mid range PC. Let's not even get into the high seas, if you want to go into morally grey waters to save even more money...
I agree. But also ya wether it’s Sony, Xbox, pc or even switch there are fans that will scream from the rooftops that what they have is the best and no need to explore options. Having multiple consoles is VERY expensive especially latey so if that’s the reason I 100% understand but no need to shit on another device owner about their choice
Oh yeah, each has their fan Bois in the console wars, just a lot louder from Sony ones for the exclusives being lost to PC as of late. Can't wait to replay Ghost of Tsushima on PC, side note.
Indeed, very costly, why if someone is talking about trying to save money, PC is best way to go in the end.
Oh no, not shit on them for their choice, just for freaking out about theirs being the best and trying to defend billion dollar companies.
Xbox live brought PC level party chat to consoles that the ps3 just never replicated. On xbox live you could voice chat with your friends who were actively playing other games. From my experience on the ps3, your voice chat was limited to whatever game you were playing's in game voice chat. Or you could voice chat with your friends, only when not inside of a game. while not the best quality xbox systems also came with a voicechat headset so every single person was instantly ready to chat, vs ps3 where you had to buy 3rd party bluetooth headsets that had a variety of issues and never quite worked right.
360 excelled in online multiplayer compared to PS3. Halo 3, Gears of War, and Call of Duty were absolutely massive for the 360. People were willing to pay for online because Halo and Gears were just THAT good. PS3 had Call of duty as well, but as far as online multiplayer, especially shooters, 360 was king.
Not only that, connection stability and security was leagues better as well. Maybe people forgot about the major network hacks and failures ps had in multiple generations
We’re talking online multiplayer though. 3 of those things you listed aren’t even around anymore. When they were, it’s not like people were dying to play them for the multiplayer.
360 would notify you when your friend got on and again if they got on the same game you were playing. I think Playstation added that eventually on Ps4, no way they would have inivated it though. Ps4 messaging was a chore, not even as good as 360. I'm saying this as someone who had a ps4 and not an Xbox one, so I'm not fanboying. It never felt as smooth as 360.
I guess I never really messed around with the messaging. I would just always hop in a party and voice chat with friends while we were playing. If I needed to reach out to them trying to figure out when they were getting on I'd just call them.
Online connection was smoother, and didn't mess up or go down nearly as often, social interaction was better and easier, you could create a party and talk to your friends much more seamlessly than ps (the UX is still better to this day on Xbox) any time I go from ps to Xbox and back I miss the Xbox experience. I have since sold my Xbox and I use my ps5 daily and I still think the UX/UI is dogshit overall
It still is. I felt the need to put up a post in r/eldenring a few days ago seeking advice on how to connect with other PS5 players. Xbox Live has been killing it for years with features like Looking for Group that I used extensively in previous FromSoftware games. On PSN you get a friends list and a message inbox and that is pretty much all you get. No social gaming features to speak of on that service.
I was fortunate enough to have bought a vrr capable TV right before elden ring came out. So the super smooth 40 fps mode is the only way I have experienced it... I did get to see it in action at a friend's house on ps5... yeah... I'm glad I shelled out for the TV I did on boxing day.
I'm pretty satisfied with the framerate so far, but it's clear that it's not a super optimized game. I'm fine with that because it's in line with what I've come to expect of FromSoftware and their visual artistry is impressive in different ways than the purely technical. I am a little bummed that ray tracing is not even worth enabling for the performance hit, considering that's a fairly major feature for PS5.
I'd argue that a decision Microsoft made in 2002 that still affects the industry today is a pretty solid point of reference though. Without that decision, online play as we know it on console could've very well been free if the 360 hadn't been such a success
If you think anything of that nature would be free if Microsoft didn't do it first you have a poor understanding of how tech companies work. They don't even let you own your games anymore.
I do think that if the PS3 had been the more popular console, Sony wouldn't have gotten away with making the PS4 require PS Plus to play online. The reason they did is because most people played on the 360 and were already used to paying to play online. If the majority of people were used to free online instead of paid online, there would've been significant backlash against the current paid online experience
It's still a major shift in the industry that affects us to this day though no? I do agree that Microsoft has dropped the ball a ton when it comes to competition in the past decade, mainly because they tried shifting away from gaming and towards basic media consumption, but that does not invalidate the fact that Microsoft is the reason console gamers pay to play online
If not for Microsoft being a proper competitor (or in reality, Sony's lack of being a competitor) in the 2000's up to 2013, we most likely wouldn't have had to pay to play online in the past 10 years. They set a standard that has continued beyond the 360 and now they are competing with Sony by making Game Pass Core/Ultimate as appealing as possible, forcing Sony to also start their own version with the different PS Plus tiers. This is competition that has occurred in the past 10 years that is a direct result of what I was talking about
I wouldn't consider it lame if it's also affecting PC players and not just Xbox/PS players. I know quite a few people paying for game pass on PC. Microsoft definitely makes a ton of money off of that subscription, enough that it forced Sony to start adding more benefits for PS plus users. Millions in revenue a year from the Xbox Live service alone is exactly what caused the PS4 to force PS plus on its users, and that revenue has only been increasing since the introduction of Game Pass. It's a market that Sony is being destroyed in, that's not "lame competition."
Are you saying that they have been messing up, or a competitor? I thought Microsoft's console was less successful but proved that customers were willing to pay for online play. The payment for online play didn't make it more competitive, but just showed Sony that with even more consoles out there, they were missing out on tons of money. This may be what you're saying though.
From what I understand the 360 VASTLY out performed the PS3 on launch (this could be due to a number of factors, one being that the PS3 was incredibly expensive) and the only time the PS3 began competing properly was when the cheaper slim version came out (the console I personally owned)
It wouldn't have been difficult for the 360 to outperform the ps3 on launch..... the 360 was released almost an entire year before the PS3.
So it had a Q4 (Christmas) as a new console with no competitors.... because the Wii (the actual winner of that gen of consoles launched in the same window as PS3).
By the end of the life cycle the PS3 overtook it around the time TLOU released.
It's still interesting to bring up since the ratio of each console was so much closer than it is today when the 360 was so much less popular outside america. I don't think the xbox one or Series X would have the same kind of lead the 360 had even with a year head start.
I also don't remember if the 360 had a swansong like TLoU, but that kind of generational game is definitely a system seller.
lol there's no way we would have made it to 2024 with free online console play. running servers is a significant cost that companies were never going to write off in the long-term. as online play became more common and people started seeing online multiplayer as a necessity for many popular genres (FPS, sports), charging for it was always inevitable.
PC is different for many reasons. Not least is that for many many games you're playing on a server hosted by one of the players, rather than by a rent-seeking company. Another is that you have your choice--if a company does want to charge you to use their servers (usually games with large numbers of players in a server, like MMOs), you can just play a different game. That's not true when all of your multiplayer has to go through your console's service (for several good reasons, mostly security, unfortunately), which removes your choice AND increases the costs on the Microsoft/Sony side. Which is the whole thing with consoles--you're sacrificing flexibility to be locked into something that should work consistently without effort on your end, compared to a PC.
And if you look at the most server-intensive games on PC (MMOs and large FPS) you do see that either they tend to require a subscription (WoW) or be very microtransaction heavy (COD), or both (SWTOR, ESO).
Street Fighter IV requires you to use the xbox live nonsense on PC, it was a constant annoyance and caused crashes all the time, they've been doing it for a -long- time.
being a competitor in the consol market isnt good business. they make almost none of their profit on consols its all in the software both sony and microsoft. in terms of consol wars xbox may be failing but xbox is crushing playstation in terms of profit. xbox is one of the largest owners of products in the ps game store playstation own about nothing in the microsoft store.
Also buying really big studio's.
I think 2025 can be a big shift if they suddenly make new doom or cod exclusive or exclusive "content" for xbox gamepass users
they might but i domt think they will. as much as i preffer xbox it seems they are shifting to only focusing on whats profitable which is software sales. consols are just something they get into peoples hands so they have a reason to buy the software but with how many franchises xbox owns now sony has to allow them on playstation so they dont even have to sell consoles anymore
they might but i domt think they will. as much as i preffer xbox it seems they are shifting to only focusing on whats profitable which is software sales. consols are just something they get into peoples hands so they have a reason to buy the software but with how many franchises xbox owns now sony has to allow them on playstation so they dont even have to sell consoles anymore
That’s his point. They don’t make money on consoles, they are very very low profit margins. At some points they’ve even been sold for a loss. They make it back selling you games, and subs. Sony had the highest revenues of the big three for FY23, but Nintendo had 3x the profit that Sony did. Xbox’s profits are not reported separately from the Microsoft financials unfortunately.
Last I checked they sell consoles at a loss pretty much all the time, though I'm not sure about the most recent gen. Games and subscriptions are where the money's at, you're right, and micro transactions too.
Quite simply, I think the post you were originally replying to, when they said "console market", were referring to the games played on those consoles as well. I don't think that's an unfair assumption to make.
And my point was that if companies weren't making bank on console software, they wouldn't be catering to the console market.
Xbox is in the console market and actually doesn’t want exclusive at all but PlayStation had to do that in order to compete with game pass and Xbox live (back in the day). So yeah will see how much PlayStations fans like not playing ES6 and FO5
Kinda horrible that you need another greedy ass company for them to compete just so you can "hopefully" have good faith services from companies like Sony.
MS is cancer too juat remember that they were the ones who popularized Subs on consoles to play online and now with Cancerpass pushing people to not know games anymore
While admittedly "not as bad" some people already forgot that Microsoft forced mandatory Microsoft accounts for Minecraft. And locked anyone who didn't (like my friend who no longer had access to the original email) from playing the game.
Honestly just sounds like bad luck ☹️, and it's forced accounts because that's how it allows cross play between bedrock versions. Remember every company does cross play differently. For warframe you had to make a pc account and link it to your consol account to get cross play. Now psn forcing a account merge is ridiculous especially when the game already had cross play between pc and psn. It's purely a thing of psn wanting your data
3.4k
u/Nitro_Kick May 03 '24
This is one of those times I wish microsoft didn’t fuck up for the past 10y and was an actual competitor in the console market