"They cannot continue to offer the same old stuff and expect it to attract people, that woud be a huge mistake." - I don't know, that works pretty well for Apple! Same old features with a few pointless token new ones that'll be tried a few times as an amusing novelty then discarded by anyone with any sense - Siri, for example. Blunderiffic, unless you like looking silly in public talking to your phone like it's a person.
"Most of what has become standard this generation is because Playstation (and to less extent, Nintendo) have been able to match the features provided by Microsoft and Xbox Live." - True but that works both ways, with Xbox 360 offering Kinect as a lame way to match the motion control of the original Wii. Fortunately the Kinect peripheral itself has many interesting uses outside waving your arms to lamely control a game character - I've seen more than a couple of robots which have a Kinect for eyes.
"By the way, I think Xbox Gold has been worth every penny this generation. The loss in value only becomes relevant starting next generation." - While I've slated it a bit, this is true, especially in the years 2005 to early 2008 when nothing could match it or even come close. Even regular free silver is good enough to download demos and free bits of DLC, which for someone who has never been hot on the online side of gaming is fairly reasonable.
The trick is, every company in the running needs to be trying their hardest to innovate and best the competition because it prevents stagnation and benefits consumers in the short and long term. If there is one monolithic untouchable beast of a company with tiny competitors far behind then that company will just release the same product over and over again (iPhone, iPhone, iPhone - still looks the same as it did in 2007 doesn't it? But as Android catches and passes it, everyone realises this. Similar thing will happen with Xbox Gold, which will mean it becomes an even better service).
True. Sky TV are the worst of the companies I listed: you pay a huge premium fee for the movies and sports channels where the good content is, and you still end up with eight minute ad breaks every fifteen minutes of content. Despite that high premium you just paid. So on top of having the premium service you also need a PVR to go with it, and guess what... that comes with a monthly subscription fee as well. All of which could be banished if Sky had better competitors.
Fortunately, in the Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft console competition, Microsoft are losing ground in a way that's good for consumers.
Having had a PS3 earlier last year on loan, and now having bought an Xbox 360 with some of the same games, I can say it doesn't just apply to the handling of online gaming - the graphical quality and framerate of titles available on both are always higher on the Xbox 360. Although Red Dead Redemption is perfectly playable in 720p with the lower framerate/textures on the PS3, that gorgious game world is more fluid, more beautiful and more immersive on the Xbox 360. About the only title I can't tell the PS3 and Xbox 360 apart on is Arkham City, and to be fair the Xbox 360 seems to have a tad less screen tearing if I really look for a difference.
I think it's fair to say that as it stands now, PS3 has a superior online experience while X360 has the superior gaming experience. Although that doesn't mean XBL Gold is needed to enjoy the latter. :D
Without pre-owned games I wouldn't be a gamer at all, personally. I'm not going to moan about the price of video games because they've been in the £40-60 mark ever since I was a kid, but I've never paid that for a title. It's just a case of waiting a while - this is better anyway so you can read REAL reviews from enthusiasts who play for the joy of it rather than being paid to review games so you're not in danger of being swept up by the hype machine, you can find out if it's a great title or not. And because of the relative high availability of a newer title that was decent and was bought in droves (Arkham City for example) the price drops more quickly and drastically. I paid £14 for my pre-owned copy of Arkham City when it was £55 only a few months ago. In fact I have six quality titles for the Xbox and the total cost is like £50.
Like anything, if you want to be the "beat my friends to own this new thing" guy you have to pay a high premium. I'd rather be the "wait for the dust to settle and sneak off with the bargains" guy, to be honest!
Content/hardware lock-in is a common way to keep customers "addicted" to a service by making it appear too difficult to leave and that you'd lose something if you did. Look at what Apple are doing: their hardware runs iOS which despite minor tweaks looks like the outdated 2007 platform it is and Apple themselves are ruining core features like Maps, but because of the platform lock-in and fear of change people continue to waste good money on their products and services. This is to a lesser extent with Microsoft and the Xbox 360, but it's still there, especially if you count repeat purchases of Xbox 360 consoles because of the epic failure rate.
Come to think of it, Microsoft are doing for video games what Sky have done/are still doing to television and Apple are doing for computing in general: bigger and bigger paywalls, more and more adverts all over the place despite the paywalls, and because people keep mindlessly ponying up the dough for this overpriced, exploitative and uncompetitive service all these companies are allowed to get away with it. People need to think more about what they're paying for rather than mindlessly handing over money they don't need to spend - a fact that should be obvious in this fairly large recession, but as most people aren't good with their money (popular culture/mass media has educated their minds to be this way) it isn't and everyone eventually loses.
The days of free and awesome online things are coming to a close. Just like the Usenet groups used to predict back in the early 1990s. I'm surprised it lasted around 15 years before that happened though...
You've really missed the point Tom was aiming at - it's not about how much, it's about value for money. He feels he is getting little to none and many gamers clearly agree with him.
Sadly you're too myopic to see that it is exactly this "STFU about $60" attitude that is allowing Microsoft and everyone else to get away with sticking more and more features behind a paywall. How about we follow that through to the point where in a few years it's $240 a year, and every single game puts 50% of the content behind another paywall rather than 10-20% of it as they do now? Because if everyone had the attitude you do that's where we'd be by 2015.
Feel free to flame me in that special way that only angry hardcore gamers can, BTW. :D
I agree with this article. It's not stated with anger or disgust, which work in it's favour. More of a quiet realisation that it's getting more and more expensive to be a gamer, in a similar way to how UK football fans are regularly gouged for club season tickets, cheap nylon knockoff versions of the strips their favourite players wear. As video gaming has risen to be big business as was said to be impossible only a few decades ago, it seems both hardware and software vendors are taking their expenses out of the fans, especially the hardcore gamers who can't live without the knowledge they have the whole game.
I recently picked up an Xbox 360 again for the first time in years - a Slim type Halo Reach edition, funnily enough. And I was disgusted to find that non-Gold XBL membership doesn't just keep certain game content away from you such as online multiplayer (something I don't care for anyway, thankfully) but you can't even use the YouTube plugin via the dashboard! Something I can do completely free using an XBMC LiveCD or LiveUSB on almost any type of PC, and as it stands XBMC has a much nicer interface than the X360 ever will. That was when I decided I wouldn't be paying for Gold membership.
While we're taking well-deserved shots at Xbox Live Gold, let's also aim a few things at the new trend for releasing DLC at the same time as the new premier £50 launch title for more money, DLC that should have been included for free with the damn game. It's bad enough that XBL Gold costs more than it is worth and that a lot of X360 gamers are on their third, fourth or fifth consoles because Microsoft couldn't engineer the damn things properly in the first place even though they got the Xbox 1 right, HEUG though it was.
All involved should stop gouging the hell out of gamers, especially on a console which is already locked down to an unreasonable extent with DRM of all kinds. I was shocked when I found out I couldn't even copy music across my home network to the Xbox 360's hard drive, I had to stream via DLNA. What is this, an Apple product? Cos even they don't lock down their devices this much.
In short, Microsoft need to accept the revenue loss on the Xbox platforms so far and stop trying to gouge it back with additional costs and pointless peripherals that add little to the experience (Kinect I'm looking at you). Maybe that Android-based Ouya console I've read about (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouya) will help shift the way gamers are treated to something more open and less expensive.
@tempertress Well generalisation isn't always a bad thing, in fact I'd say it's needed for brevity. And the "conclusion" section of any essay is about boiling down a lot of ideas to a simple premise. I'm pointing it out for those who missed the point and got offended by the fact they thought they were being pushed into a box.
Do you know that you bear a striking resemblance to British actress Sarah Solemani? Have a look: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1683850/
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