Gold Vs. Plus: How Sony Is Making a Mockery Of Xbox Live

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

I usually never copy and entire article of this length, but felt it was necessary for this article as the whole thing is relevant to itself.

Source: Kotaku

Gold Vs. Plus: How Sony Is Making a Mockery Of Xbox Live

You can pick your preference between PlayStation and Xbox. You can argue that Halo is better than KillZone or that Uncharted tops Gears of War.

But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that the Xbox 360's online subscription service is superior to the PlayStation 3's. This is what competition does, and, today, the long-running $60-a-year Xbox Live Gold just doesn't seem to offer as much value as the newer, upstart, the $50 PlayStation Plus.

Let's break this down.

Xbox Live Gold costs about $5 a month for individual plan. The paid plan gives Xbox 360 gamers an extra suite of features atop basic gamer-to-gamer text-messaging, cross-game-chat and access to an online marketplace, all of which are free as part of?Xbox Live Silver .

Gold members also get the following features:

Xbox Live Gold Features

• Multiplayer Gaming
  
• Early Access to Some Demos
  
• Beta Access
  
• Game Discounts (40-50% off, often)
  
• Hulu Plus
  
• Netflix
  
• Amazon Instant Video
  
• Party Chat
  
• Video Kinect
  
• Zune Music Streaming
  
• Halo Waypoint
  
• Avatar Kinect
  
• Internet Explorer
  
• Cloud Storage
  
• Facebook
  
• Skype
  
• Twitter
  
• YouTube
  
• last.fm
  
• MLB.tv
  
• HBO Go
  
• ESPN
  
• Forthcoming: Free-to-Play Gaming
  

Those are the major perks and features available in the U.S. There are several more entertainment services available in other regions. (Wikipedia has a good chart for this; Microsoft offers their own less-detailed chart.) Some of the services here, including HBO Go and Netflix require their own paid memberships with those services. And some, such as YouTube and Twitter, are free on just about any device other than an Xbox 360.

Originally, Xbox Live Gold's main advertised feature was access to multiplayer gaming. With the launch of the PlayStation 3, Sony countered that by refusing to charge for online gaming. Sony's PlayStation Network was, initially, free to anyone who bought the console. There was no paid service, no PSN Gold. The PS3 couldn't do cross-game chat. That was the biggest knock. But it also didn't charge gamers.

To this day, Xbox 360 owners pay for things on their console that PlayStation owners don't. Let's strike through all of the services on Gold that PlayStation 3 owners get at no extra charge from Sony.

Xbox Live Gold minus Free PSN Features

• Multiplayer Gaming
  
• Early Access to Some Demos
  
• Beta Access
  
• Game Discounts (40-50% off, often)
  
• Hulu Plus
  
• Netflix
  
• Amazon Instant Video
  
• Party Chat
  
• Video Kinect
  
• Zune Music Store Access
  
• Halo Waypoint
  
• Avatar Kinect
  
• Internet Explorer
  
• Cloud Storage
  
• Facebook
  
• Skype
  
• Twitter
  
• YouTube
  
• last.fm
  
• MLB.tv
  
• HBO Go
  
• ESPN
  
• Forthcoming: Free-to-Play Gaming
  

There's one cheat there. Sony owners don't actually get Internet Explorer, but they can browse the web for free. It also does offer free-to-play games in its free PlayStation Home avatar hangout/whatever-it-is as well as with games such as Free Realms and DC Universe Online.

Several of Gold's features aren't available on PlayStation. There's no Halo Waypoint access, no ESPN, no HBO Go. But Netflix is there, Hulu Plus is there, still requiring outside subscriptions but no added payment to Sony.

This is how it's been for a while, but, last year in 2010, Sony introduced PlayStation Plus and started giving its customers the chance to pay for more services. Players got discounts in the PSN store, beta access, but nothing amazing. Then, this past June, Sony added one more key perk, the perk that makes a mockery out of Xbox Live Gold: free games.

Here's what PlayStation 3 owners get for Plus:

PlayStation Plus Features

• Instant Game Collection (Free Games)
  
• Game Discounts (40-50% off, often)
  
• Early Access to Some Demos
  
• Beta Access
  
• Cloud Storage
  
• Automatic Patching/Firmware-Updates
  
• 1-Hour Free Access to Full Games
  

Note the length of that list. It's short. Microsoft's Gold list is longer. But Sony's has a bullet point that it's hard for Xbox Live to top, the Instant Game Collection. That's a bundle of games that a Plus subscriber can download and that remain accessible for as long as the subscriber's account lasts. In the few months the service has been live, Sony has removed some games from the offer and added new ones. The removed games are still available to legacy subscribers; they're just not available for free to new ones. For this to be a good deal, the games better be good, right?

Here's what you'd have in your Instant Game Collection through early September, if you were a Plus subscriber since the free game offers started in June (games no longer offered to new subscribers have an asterisk):

Free Games Available Through PlayStation Plus

• The Walking Dead Episodes 1 & 2
  
• Bloodrayne Betrayal
  
• Outland
  
• Infamous 2
  
• Little Big Planet 2
  
• Ratchet & Clank All 4 One
  
• Space Marine
  
• Saints Row 2
  
• Renegade Ops
  
• Pac-Man Championship Edition DX
  
• Choplifter
  
• Sideway
  
• Just Cause 2*
  
• Lara Croft & The Guardian of Light*
  
• Gotham City Impostors*
  
• Hard Corps Uprising*
  
• Zombie Apocalypse*
  
• Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown*
  
• (Borderlands will be added in September)
  

Pretty good list, no? Well, some people don't like it: specifically, U.S. Plus subscribers have started complaining that Europe gets an even better batch, which includes Dead Space 2 and will soon include Red Dead Redemption . The grass is indeed always greener somewhere else.

Xbox Live is much more widely-discussed than PlayStation Network. Microsoft has been noisier about their online service. They've been more aggressive, standardizing online console multiplayer gaming, striking first with Netflix streaming and just boasting more about their pay service. The company reports that it has 40 million Xbox Live subscribers, though it won't say how many are paying Gold members (one Microsoft estimate from two years ago put it at about half that count). Competition, however, causes the other party to do amazing things and that appears to be what's happening with PlayStation Plus, a service which?surprise?Sony doesn't share subscriber stats for either.

It's a safe bet that Sony has fewer Plus people than Microsoft has Golds. It's also a safe bet that Sony reacts awfully well to competition, as they've been showing throughout the summer.

Our colleagues at Gizmodo recently argued that Xbox Live Gold should be free. (Microsoft might counter that their services cost money to maintain; we might counter that that's why they're running ads on Xbox Live.) Let's pile on a new argument: Gold should be as impressive as PlayStation Plus. For consumers, it sure looks like Sony is offering the better deal.

CORRECTION: This story originally didn't list the discounts on games and DLC that Xbox Live Gold members are also offered. I've added them. That matches the discounts feature offered in PlayStation Plus.

Interesting article, although I feel it is really hard to compare the two services, as they are fundamentally different offerings.

I do hope it means Microsoft adds some additional offerings to the next version of Live, but I am not holding my breath there.

I will also say I have used Playstation + since it's inception, and strongly recommend it. The On Demand Games library alone pays for the subscription itself, but the cloud storage and auto updates are both reasons why I truly enjoy it.

[count0nz]

I use to think PS+ was a Ripoff but now i Tryed it I Love it.

+ we get close to 400-500 NZ Worth of Free games for a low Sub cost. pretty good.. for the Cost of 1 game we get 20+ free.

[Shane Nokes]

The one thing that they forget about is that Xbox LIVE also has the Enforcement team, which you can count as a Gold service in a way. Sure they protect the service as a whole, but they also monitor online games, which is a Gold only feature.

I'm not aware of any Sony equivalent team that monitors the service & helps keep it clean.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

The one thing that they forget about is that Xbox LIVE also has the Enforcement team, which you can count as a Gold service in a way. Sure they protect the service as a whole, but they also monitor online games, which is a Gold only feature.

I'm not aware of any Sony equivalent team that monitors the service & helps keep it clean.

The second you step into online MP you're going to come across idiots, paying to try and stop the culture will never work. All services these days have at least basic reporting functionality, and then muting ability, and that's about as good as you'll get.

As time goes on I find it harder to understand one main thing, not crossing off VS bulletpoints ,or trying to argue Plus vs Live, or Xbox 360 vs PS3, simply the core concept of how MS still manages to convince people paying for basic online MP in 2012 is somehow good value (value to one person is different to another, the previous statement is simply my opinion). I'm thinking about the very simple idea of playing a MP game with friends, not all the bells and whistles and "service butlers" to make your life easier, playing the online part of the game you bought, most notably ones not even made by MS.

Even MMOs are in turmoil with Guild Wars 2 making the internet seriously question WoWs subscription, and it used to be the undisputed go-to for defending pay monthly. Even amongst the last few years worth of free to play MMOs, it was untouched. Some cracks appearing now though, especially as GW2 offers content people look at and say "how do they do it for free/how do they make money?!". There's always ways to make money, we simply get used to certain ways companies have done it before, and don't realize there's always other possibilities and we aren't always going to see costs (or any cost) in the same areas forever.

But I guess the second I bring up WoW there is your answer, when there is enough loyalty it will never matter what happens elsewhere. Loyalty can be tested though, and times do come when it's hard to not say, wait a minute, the competition might actually be doing something interesting here. Sony have managed to carve an interesting corner of the pie for themselves, not simply trying to follow in exactly what MS do to make money, but do something a little different. The jury will be out on this one for time to come however, as Sony's experience in the online realm has to continue to mature.

On a related note my Plus sub is about to lapse, and I'm going to leave it dead for a while due to holiday plans next month. The thing is while I will miss getting my monthly games, and more importantly even being able to play some of the titles on my hard drive, the fall back isn't exactly massively crippled functionality. I'll still get online to play with friends in the meantime, which really is one of the biggest draws to gaming. When your XBL sub runs out, and money is tight, you're pretty much SOL for gaming with friends, there isn't really a middleground which is what IMO, MS will keep getting prodded at as time goes on.

[Shane Nokes]

It's not just about the 'problem' users. It's also about security which is why I brought that up. That team does more than just sit in-game monitoring things.

That's why I state that I'm not aware of any Sony team that handles what the Enforcement team handles. They do a TON of work to help keep cheaters and such off the service, not just the standard 'problem' users.

[123456789A]

I think Sony made a mockery of itself by storing peoples passwords in plain text.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

It's not just about the 'problem' users. It's also about security which is why I brought that up. That team does more than just sit in-game monitoring things.

That's why I state that I'm not aware of any Sony team that handles what the Enforcement team handles. They do a TON of work to help keep cheaters and such off the service, not just the standard 'problem' users.

Only thing I could find was an online form to report someone found here (need to login with a PSN account to see it), so I do not think you can do it through the console itself, at least not that I am aware.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Only thing I could find was an online form to report someone found here (need to login with a PSN account to see it), so I do not think you can do it through the console itself, at least not that I am aware.

Friends -> Players met -> Add to blocklist

But I don't know if that actually gives you an option to report while blocking. Never blocked anyone haha.

[Shane Nokes]

It looks like that site covers some of the same categories that LIVE covers for reporting. So it looks like they might have a framework in place. I wonder how much they actively monitor the network...and what sort of controls there are in place since this type of reporting would probably make it harder to confirm activity.

[trihawk7]

To be honest I think Xbox Live Gold is basically essential for a online Xbox user, such as parties, online matchmaking, etc etc. But PSN+ is just a add-on not a gateway to a new community like Xbox Live Gold does.

[still1]

Average gamer's look for free online gaming and support for video streaming like Netflix,hulu and others...

all those additional perks for hard core gamers. Free psn suffice most of the gamer's.

[greenwizard88]

xbox live is a necessity if you want to own an xbox and use it for anything at all. Since my gold sub expired, I haven't even turned my xbox on, and until I have the spare $15 for another month it'll stay off.

That's just how xbox is.

[Andrew Lyle Global Moderator]

I'm glad they point out the fact this is a US comparison. Other countries lack so many features, like Canada not allowing access to Hulu or the full catelog of Netflix.

Either way, good article.

[abysal]

My only gripe with xbox service is that multilayer should be included for free.

[Shane Nokes]

xbox live is a necessity if you want to own an xbox and use it for anything at all. Since my gold sub expired, I haven't even turned my xbox on, and until I have the spare $15 for another month it'll stay off.

That's just how xbox is.

Why are you paying $15 a month? I ask because it's only $10 a month for LIVE if you pay for it at full price. Buying it for a year at full price is 50% off the per month price, and buying it at places like Amazon makes it even cheaper. ;)

Average gamer's look for free online gaming and support for video streaming like Netflix,hulu and others...

all those additional perks for hard core gamers. Free psn suffice most of the gamer's.

If that were the case then the Xbox wouldn't be selling more consoles than the PS3. To me that says the average gamer wants something like what Xbox LIVE provides...unless I'm not understanding your interpretation of average gamer correctly.

[still1]

If that were the case then the Xbox wouldn't be selling more consoles than the PS3. To me that says the average gamer wants something like what Xbox LIVE provides...unless I'm not understanding your interpretation of average gamer correctly.

xbox is selling more console than ps3 only in the Us no outside... worldwide they both sell equally...

many buy it just because of kinect and its a popular console.

[Shane Nokes]

xbox is selling more console than ps3 only in the Us no outside... worldwide they both sell equally...

many buy it just because of kinect and its a popular console.

So 67.2 million (Xbox) vs 63.9 million (PS3) worldwide would be considered equal?

(Figures as of March 2012)

I guess I just considered almost $700,000,000 difference in hardware sales alone to be quite a difference. Also factor in that Xbox has the highest attach rate (titles sold per console) in the industry. So I still state that Xbox is far ahead of the PS3 when it comes to the online gaming aspect...and people do care about security & reliability.

[Boxster17]

So 67.2 million (Xbox) vs 63.9 million (PS3) worldwide would be considered equal?

(Figures as of March 2012)

Not saying that X360 hasn't sold more but the last figures I saw were about 67.9 vs. 66.0, then you figure consoles per year and the PS3 would be looking to do better long term.

Still think the X360 should be able to do MP for free, since all what they're doing is providing the matchmaking service.

[styxrtp]

Zune Music Store Access = Sony Music Unlimited

9.99 Zune Music Store

4.99 Sony Music Unlimited (9.99 includes mobile devices & Bravia enabled devices)

[Shane Nokes]

Not saying that X360 hasn't sold more but the last figures I saw were about 67.9 vs. 66.0, then you figure consoles per year and the PS3 would be looking to do better long term.

Still think the X360 should be able to do MP for free, since all what they're doing is providing the matchmaking service.

It would be pretty hard for MS to have only sold 700,000 consoles in the last 5 months worldwide considering that they've sold over 800,000 in just the US alone in the April-July timeframe according to NPD. The PS3 in the US market tends to sell about 50,000 less units per month.

So to have caught up like that means there's some funny math. Mind showing a source for your figures? Especially considering that would mean the PS3 in equivalent time-frame was outselling the Xbox by 3:1. I think you're going to find that you may have misread the figures.

Zune Music Store Access = Sony Music Unlimited

9.99 Zune Music Store

4.99 Sony Music Unlimited (9.99 includes mobile devices & Bravia enabled devices)

Yes, and $9.99 for the Zune/Xbox Music store also includes mobile devices, PC's, and Xbox 360's. So the price is evenly matched when you look at services provided.

[Doli]

Xbox has Video Kinect and PS3 has video chat with the EyeToy or with a USB video camera.

[Raa]

On face value, it DOES seem like PSN gives a better deal, and for a cheaper price.

[Shane Nokes]

On face value, it DOES seem like PSN gives a better deal, and for a cheaper price.

Which is why the old saying, "Never take anything at face value" exists. ;)

[mattmatik]

Psssh, I don't miss XBL at all. After I finally got my PS3 in December and have used PSN+, I could kick myself for paying $50-$60/year.

My next console will be dictated by the online setup for sure.

[DPyro]

PSN has a grief feature.