Sea Skimmer wrote:What, do you have some fetish that makes you feel all warm and squishy inside if I’m wrong about something? The only thing I’ve ever heard about Shadowrun is how much people fucking hate it for not continuing to be an RPG, and you’ve got to be fucking stupid to pay for xbox live on your own computer. Ill be once again impressed Its already a huge fucking rip off as it is. Yes, you consumer can now pay to play online using the xbox you already bought on the internet connection you already pay for, the game you already paid an especially high premium for, using an online service which is based around using your own xbox as the freaking server!
Hey, when you come in here and not only state something as FACT, but then go on to make conjecture based on that assumption as though that were immutable fact, when both are, in fact, very, very wrong and something that's been known by anyone with a passing interest in the situation for, well, months, you shouldn't be surprised when you get smacked the hell down. Is it SO hard for you to simply say "No, I don't think so" or "Not that I'm aware of"? Not only do you have to be right, you seem to have to be righteous about it. But hey, why let a little things like facts get in the way of a tirade?
Regardless if it's a bad deal for the consumer, or if it's poorly implemented, it IS something Microsoft is working for, because they don't want COMPETITION between Xbox and PC versions, they want to merge them if at all possible, because then they can merge the significant PC gaming market with the console market.
Why would a company want to create competition inside itself? Everyone knows that PC versions of games tend to be superior to the console versions unless it's a shitty port, and people get annoyed at having to choose, because a friend might have a crappy PC and have to get the console version. The other friend might not have a 360 or any plans on getting one. Making it easier to allow those two friends to play together is a good thing for gamers. Sure, it's bad to charge money for it as that said gamer, but we're already well on the way to subscription games as is, between micropayments, MMO monthly fees, etc.
But hey, bitch some more. I'm sure you'll find something else to have a kneejerk whinefest about later that is once again completely wrong.
By the way, you conveniently neglect to bring up the other parts of the service, like being able to report abusive players, playing with friends, integrated voice chat, the ability to invite friends to games you are currently in, etc. You can argue, of course, that maybe it's overpriced, or that there should be a bare bones version for free, but the bottom line is that they have offered the most fully featured, smoothest, functional online service for consoles, and it was not free or of negligible cost for them to do this. Maybe if Sony's online offering manages to NOT suck so much, then you'll have a good counterpoint to this, but as it is now, for consoles, Live is the only game in town.
Now, as far as PCs go, there is no standard. Every game has their own matchmaking software, sometimes it's good, sometimes it sucks, and frankly, there's a good reason why it's free, you do get what you pay for. Now, people like you and me, we can make do with that. Most halfway technical people can manage with the madness that is PC gaming, getting patches, updating drivers, installing codec packs to stop games from crashing, etc. and so forth, but some people can't or don't want to be bothered with it, and are willing to pay the extra money to have no-hassle gaming online and off.
So please, do tell me that people can't or shouldn't charge money for a service, that would be hilarious.
