All 3 Are Charging Money for Online Play

Yeah, has that day arrived? It has. Oh boy, were lemmings up in joy when Sony started charging for online play, yet they eased themselves in by offering "free" games, and then going, well, there's money to be made with this. And now, here we are, even Nintendo, the weakest of the bunch, in terms of online infrastructure and value, coming out to say that they're asking a penny or two to play whatever games they have that feature online play.

Microsoft started charging. It was alright. It's only Xbox Live, plus you get some games. And then, Sony joined. Well, that's two, now, but I'm doing it for the 8-bit genius games that come my way. And.. here's Nintendo. "We're doing it because everyone else is. Where's my fork to eat my soup?". That's what it has come down to.

3 brilliant companies, asking money to play online. That's a lot of money. And are you willing to pay the price? Especially with Nintendo, who are still figuring out the very essence of fire.

I'm already paying for Ps+ and Xbox Live. I don't even play online, but I get a bunch of games from them I never play. So, are you ready to give Nintendo a share? Myself? I'm not ready. Their offerings, so far, are ridiculous, and their lineup isn't brilliant. Like, it's Nintendo asking money to use their online services. The joke lasts all the way from America to Japan itself. And all along the way, people will be laughing.

What about you?

I believe MS is going to offer online gaming for free in the future but still offer the extra benefits of being a gold Member. MS pre-existing structure should be able to facilitate this by leveraging the expensive with other businesses that already uses this network infrastructure. If MS is really serious of pushing Window 10 for all then this would be the next logical step in the transition.

With regards to Nintendo, I think its foolish for anyone to pay for their online services when the chances of it being absolute garbage is very very high.

Sony can benefit from free cloud saves. :)

Thanks Obama

And online is still free for PC.

Steam provides a great service as well.

p2p2p

How I feel about online multiplayer:

Still refusing to pay for it

We already pay enough for Interent and cell phone use, and now online play? At least PC gaming does it right and online free play continues to be free.

MS and Sony offer something more than just the Online Play, what you get with Nintendo is a joke...

You don't want to play SNES and NES games? You get a a whole ONE game every month that expires at the end of the month. Deal of the century.

PC ain't owned by anyone so PC don't pay for servers and shit unless it's private servers. Mostly it's devs paying the cost to run their own servers for pc gives them control.

MS, Sony and now Ninty have to pay to keep their respective services alive. Different situations between console and PC, PC is lucky if it were owned by a big company you'd have to pay for online too.

Letting Plus run. Let Live run before I sold the x1. Sure as hell not paying for Nintendo's.

Thanks Microsoft.

Never paid MS or Sony for MP, certainly not Nintendo.

I'm fine with paying for PSN. Paying for Nintendo online is just lol. No thanks.

Thanks M$ for introducing shitty practices to the industry.

If charging for online play leads to Nintendo improving their online service then not only don't I have a problem with them charging but I would be happy that they are charging. I've never had a problem paying for an online service as long as I can see that they are putting the money that they make from the subscription back into the service to make it better since the amount of fun that I get from playing on a quality online service is well worth the pocket change that the subscription cost. You get what you pay for and free online services on consoles have always been terrible, so if they need to charge a few dollars in order to deliver a better service, I'm fine with that.

I'll continue to subscribe to Xbox Live since it is the best service and therefore the primary place that I like to play online. I'm going to subscribe to Nintendo's service as well since I can't miss out on playing Mario Kart online plus Nintendo making NES and SNES games (and hopefully eventually N64 games) playable online is also of great interest to me. I wouldn't mind also paying for Sony's online service if the PS4 had some great exclusive multiplayer games that I wanted to play, but right now they don't have any great multiplayer exclusives so there is no reason for me to subscribe to PSN right now.

I only pay for PS Plus and was doing it before PS4 so it's not that big a deal. That said, when I get an NS, I will not pay for their joke of an online infrastructure. I'm just going to have it be my "classic" system that has no online.

Join PCMR and free yourselves of corporate greed.

I recently received notice that the XBL fee was increasing by 10$, sucks but it is what it is. I'm happy with the service, and when you have companies such as EA charging you for simply renting their dedicated servers, it's not too shabby at the end of the day.

The voice chat quality in Xbox parties is quite good these days, and then you have pretty solid dedicated servers(in my area anyways) for first party titles such as Forza Horizon 3.

So it sucks that it costs me money, but those things along with the other perks you get with the membership make it worth it for me and feels like I'm getting something good in return. I'll tell you something there are many other nasty monthly fees that make me waste money way more than the XBL fee, such as the cell phone fee. Anyways just my 2 cents

Paying online is only a thing because people didn't complain about it enough. Instead, fanboys defended it against the consumers' best interests. The same can be said for the horde of DLCs that's common these days, and microtransactions in full-priced games. When the consumers themselves defend the anti-consumer practices, there is little reason for publishers not to shove it down our throats.

On the other hand, what's happening out on PC? When Pay-2-Win MMOs first launched in the West, they were so universally slammed that ALL MMOs and multiplayer games released since then have kept a very careful design of its pricing models to avoid the stigma of P2W. When Valve, the creator of the most popular online platform on PC, suggested the idea of paid modding, even they were slammed by consumers and that too is no longer a thing. When consumers voice up, that power matters.

MS spent over a Billion dollars building the Xbox Live network so that 3rd Parties wouldn't have to fund their own servers and allowing the Xbox Live network to be unified. Somehow that huge investment should just be given away for free without a return. Self entitlement is BS. If it cost money to run these servers then MS/Sony should be allowed to make a profit off of it. Every investment should have a chance for some type of return. Staying in business is increasingly more difficult but the new generation has a big sense of self entitlement making it even more difficult.

May I ask you a question?

Would you invest a Billion dollars into something without expecting a return on your investment??

People outside SW should be more reasonable and take into consideration that MS's and Sony's online infrastructure sucked donkeyballs before they started charging for it, and they still leave a lot to be desired. Nintendo will have to make it attractive to sell it. We don't even know how much it will cost or what it will do for us and people are already writing it off.

Lol that's BS. Systems like Steam use dedicated servers in similar ways to MS and they don't charge. Sony used dedicated servers even for matchmaking in all their first party games on PS3 and they didn't charge back then. M$ charging was M$ being greedy as usual. Now they introduced another greedy practice to the industry. Fuckers...

@aigis: Sony and Nintendo. Followed MS they were not forced into it leave the fanboy crap out of here pls

I'm only going to play games offline. Yakuza 0 has a good amount of offline content.

Steam can do this because they have a near monopoly on PC digital sales. Neither MS, Sony or Nintendo have that type of control over a huge market. Sony lost a ton of money during the PS3 era so that explains that.

Depends on cost and if their online experience has improved for Nintendo.

I'm only paying for PS+ right now and might stop if the games offered don't improve by the time my sub comes up. I used to get a lot of use out of cloud saves but have only been playing at home now recently. Rarely play online.

When Microsoft started XBL, it was $50 a year back on the original Xbox. No one cared about having to pay for it because at the time, it was awesome and new. Voice chat wasn't even very big or good on PC yet but here is this service that let's you talk to people all over the world while you play with them. You had a friends list so you could see what your friends we're playing and go join them. There were voice changer options so if you were a little kid you could make your voice deeper. So many little things that we take for granted now that Microsoft either started or made more assessable and better way back then. Keep in mind Steam wasn't even a thing yet.

That said, if Nintendo tries charging the same prices as the other guys while not offering an equal service (which we know they can't) I wasn't gonna bother with them anyway.

The least they can do for me to accept the online fees (i won't really accept it, more like be over it) is crossplay on all platforms. I want to play against dirty lems on my ps4.

You guys should keep a more open mind towards subscription models. Yes, paying for something that was traditionally free sucks, but online subscriptions really do offer a lot more bang for the buck. Consider EA Origin Access (PC). $5.00 a Month (U.S) and you get unlimited access to the vault (with AAA games in there, including some around a year old), discounts on all your purchases, early/beta access and trials. Yes, back in the day, you could buy a magazine and get a Playstation demo disc for "free" (minus the cost of the magazine), and PC has plenty of demos and early access titles, but subscription-based models really can (and usually do) lower the gaming budget while also opening up access to games you traditionally wouldn't buy/play.

I don't pay PS+ full price, I look for deals on PS+ and I do end up finding $20-$30yr 1 pre-paid cards and you can find deals if you really look hard. Granted, I pay PS+ & EA Origin, if the values are good to me, I'll pay. I only play Nintendo games single player and I wasn't gonna bother paying online anyway.

In that case a much better model to introduce would have been to pay for the specific services. I don't care about voice chat but then M$ could have charged for that for the people that care while leaving the basic connection to everyone else. The fact that they basically kidnapped half of a lot of games behind a fee is a disgrace. If I pay for a device to play games I expect that I can play them completely without having to pay extra to unlock a portion of them. **** M$

M$ has practically a monopoly on the PC business and billions of times more money than Valve so it's ridiculous to assume that they couldn't afford it. Also there are many games that offer dedicated servers without having to pay a fee.

@EG101: @davillain-: C'mon guys you should know that dakur is fast becoming the biggest trolling manticow on here right? Nothing you say to him will matter, he hates everything MS, so talking to him is pointless.

Meanwhile on PC :P

@i_p_daily: I don't have a problem with dakur, as in matter of fact, he actually likes MS hence, he's always coming to MS threads. Now if I really hated a company that I despise the most, I don't ever show up in that thread. Take mobile games, I hate mobile games with a passion, I never go to Mobile Connection forums here in GS.

only one gives you what you pay for

It is at times like this I am glad to be a PC gamer.

I'm glad to be a PC gamer. Not only is my online free, but it has exponentially more features, games, players, competitive scenes, and life-span.

Are you butthurt because of your self-imposed ban to talk to me while others get my undivided attention?

I'll always be here for you in case you want to get properly owned. I know you want it.

I blame sony for adopting this and making it a standard.

MS made it a premium, SONY made it mainstream.

Nintendo hasn't really proven themselves for me to give them my money.

I don't like the Toll Booth system, never have and never will. I only keep my Xbox Live Subscription alive because of Killer Instinct on my PC (and 3rd Strike on 360, and yes I know I don't need Live for KI, I just have the Gold Free stuff which you lose when you unsub), and my PS+ I only have because I have a lot of Online games for my PS4 that I do like playing.

Chances are if a Monster Hunter game shows up on Switch, I'll be paying for Nintendo's Online Service, but Until then, I'll have to see how well Nintendo's Online games are compared to Wii U. All I can say is, I better not get a terrible experience.

I said that? That fact you brought it up is more fanboy than anything

I have PS+ through to January 2019 that I did not have to pay much, if any, money for, so I have stopped worrying about that.

I do not pay for Xbox Live.

I will not pay for Nintendo, except for the specific months that their online enabled games that I want to play come out (such as Kart, Smash, Pokemon, Splatoon).

Shhhhhh don't give away his secret lol. Seriousy though he's a classic cow, he doesn't love his system he just hate yours.

No he really is a manticow, let me explain. He owns multiple consoles, unfortunately they are the PS4, PS4 Slim & the PS4 Pro, hence the reason for me calling him a manticow :)

10 bucka a month for both services .... I spend more than that in Cokes.