There's a lot of gamers in this thread too young to remember how overloaded and miserable the free console game servers were.
Microsoft was like "chuck us like ~$5 per month and we will put up enough servers so the games are actually playable". At the time, it was the best deal available for console gaming.
Honestly an argument could be made it was the most economical way to play online, in general, at the time. The console cost was subsidized, and the online servers were arguably at-cost, and you really only needed to buy one copy of Halo to join the fun.
Marketplaces are always a game of chicken. If a company thinks they can charge more for less they will; they just need another company to do it first
So glad I bought a Steam Deck. Playing games on the couch with friends who each brought their own controller, easily connecting and combining PS4, PS5, Xbox and Nintendo controllers to play together feels surreal and like living in the future of gaming. Never buying another console or their subscriptions ever again.
I’d always been a PC gamer and didn’t really get into console multiplayer games ever. It wasn’t until my young son started growing up and getting into gaming that we started looking at doing multiplayer games on consoles. I was appalled by this whole dumb subscription model for playing multiplayer on games that you already bought over the internet (which you’ve also already paid money to your ISP for). Having played years of online gaming for free, the idea of having to pay to play is just mind-boggling to me (though I’ll allow for MMORPGs and some other types of games, that’s understandable).
The worst offender is/was Gears of War, which requires you to sign up for the Xbox game pass in order to play Horde mode, which is just a goddamn couch co-op mode where you play against waves of cpu opponents. It was fucking free in GoW2, literally no internet required, but then suddenly these bastards required you to subscribe to their dumb fucking gaming service just for the privilege of playing against the computer. When I complained about it, people acted like I was entitled or stuck up for expecting it to be free. Just absolute bullshit.
People pay it. There's yer problem.
Switched to PC gaming years ago and never looked back. Praise gaben.
It's why I went back to PC gaming. As an aging man with children, I am no longer interested in having a bleeding edge gaming machine so I went to consoles for a while. It was too painful keeping a subscription on something I don't often play so I didn't bother with a PS5 and got a steamdeck instead.
That's why I only buy consoles that aren't supported anymore and mod them, it's just better and cheaper.
Get a Steam Deck or build some SteamOS machine console.
Permanently Deleted
It would have never lasted or been as good. P2P has plenty of issues. And servers would eventually need to be paid for. This would just lead to higher priced games, game specific subscriptions, ad funded online gaming or worse micro transaction per game.
Not an XBox or XBoL user.
If they're running infrastructure that hosts game servers, while keeping all that standardized and cheat-free, that might be a bargain at $15/mo or whatever it costs. But if they're just providing match-making, listing game servers, all while hosting matches on consoles, they're just taking your money.
I still remember my first online console gaming experience… Alien Front Online on the Dreamcast. Still not sure how that was an actual thing at that point - the controller even had a little mic module that would slip in where the memory cards went.
Just looked it up - I’m shocked it came out almost 2 full years before Xbox live…
I, too, sleep in a bed, lying down.
Tbh, I'm not only blaming those corps but also the whalers for enabling it. It could have died but people funded it and now here we are. I mean paying subs for servers made sense, then they did game pass, microtransactions and all other stuff, and now it's unplayable for me. Solo games on consoles, and multiple players on PC only if they're worth it. Even with some trash games like CoD, I miss them when they weren't subscription based. I bought CoD Vanguard out of nostalgic and it didn't even take me a week to get turned off by game pass. I regretted it, I tried to have it refunded but I played a bit too longer past refund period.
It sucks so bad. I'm glad I kept my old consoles like n64, ps2, ps3, wii, wii u, GBA SP, DS etc. I still get hooked playing those old games.
I got switch, but only for zelda games, thankfully they haven't mess with those type of games... So far...
Not only the PCMASTERRACE doesn't pay subscription, we also got 20 great games for free over X-mas from Epic, Gog, Indigala and many more.
And if you really want a subscription, Amazon Prime gives you 5-10 games per month for free. Permanently.
The funny thing is that Microsoft also attempted to bring paid online to PC back in the GFWL days and failed.
I think most people accepted Xbox Live being paid due to the fact that online gaming on consoles wasn't all that prominent compared to PC at the time.
Both Xbox and PSN had to start offering extra bonuses to stop people from having that "Hey, wait..." moment. For a lot of people, the free games were the whole cake, not the cherry on top.
Paying to play exclusives online is fair game, servers need funding and all, but the fact that you need to pay for online games of third party devs who won't see anything from the extra expense is bull.
As somebody with a PC, I don't understand this. Does this mean that console games are only subscriptions now?
its inevitable under capitalism
The lack of self awareness is amazing. Yep, fuck Microsoft! How dare they make a product that the gaming community chose to support instead of buying competing products! Shame on THEM for making the thing YOU voluntarily paid for!
We did this to ourselves. Literally.
