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

[Shane Nokes]

PSN has a grief feature.

That's pretty cool. :)

I never noticed that back when...then again I got pretty upset when Sony removed me from the G.A.P. without ever sending me my welcome kit, and the reason why was because I questioned an older members posting about something weird. I wasn't rude, didn't curse...just pointed out that something was odd in what they'd stated. After that I just used it for occasional Blu-Rays. I don't even really do that anymore since I picked up my Sony Blu-Ray 3D Home Theater system...now it just sits there looking lonely most of the time :(

[HawkMan]

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.

Funny, I can play ME3, GoW and all my other games without gold. Still I have gold because it's cheap and I want to mp sometimes.

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

Interesting article I think that MS should offer more for their Gold subscribers. To be honest, the only reason I keep my Gold sub is to play online, I don't find myself using the other features. Maybe I should start.

[compl3x]

It seems MS has done a rather good job at convincing people that the Gold service is something they should pay for. I bought it twice when it was offered to me on the Dash for $2 and I hardly used it.

The PS+ service is very good value for money.

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

Thinking about it though. I've never paid the RRP for it. I've always taken up the offers on the dashboard or when they have codes for a discounted price on online retailers. I don't feel so bad then. :p

[Nashy]

Next Gen consoles are coming soon. It took Sony all that time to get something that is slightly better than Live.

[MikeChipshop Member]

Don't think i've ever paid more than ?25 for a years Gold. I suppose PS gets it's own discounts too.

[red.]

I don't have either Plus or Gold anymore. I tend to only use a few features of the consoles nowadays (gaming, browser, streaming) which is why i've found it difficult to justify paying for Gold since my sub expired last year. Especially as i only used it for online gaming and as I tend to only play MP a handful of times a year i'm quite happy with the free offerings i can get on the PS3. If MS has a middle tier for people who only want to play online then i think i would be more interested.

[Elliot B.]

Paying for Xbox Live is the reason I've never gone for it on my Xbox 360. I stick to PC for multilayer for this reason.

[Rigby]

It's not just the PS3, things like Netflix are free on the Wii and every other device out there. Microsoft is just disgustingly greedy, and why not? They practically own the console market right now so they can get away with it.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Next Gen consoles are coming soon. It took Sony all that time to get something that is slightly better than Live.

And MS just let them, when they too could have been upgrading their service to be a better value, which I think is the actual overall point of the article. MS has a very good service with Live, which I am actually a Live founder (even though I forget my password for DirtyLarry and I think I lost the name which is a whole other story) and have had it since the first XBox, but more and more it is starting to look like you get less and less for the money.

Again, I think that is the point of it all, not to say which is ultimately the better service, as I said in my first post I really do not think you can even compare the two as they are pretty fundamentally different, but to say maybe MS needs to start offering some more.

Then again if I was MS, and people eat Live up like candy, I doubt I would offer more either.

My own biggest gripe with Live was requiring it for MP gaming. That just seems wrong to me. Some people are on hard times and cannot buy a lot of games. I know a few. They buy a game like Battlefield 3, are really looking forward to it, and they are stuck playing the SP because they also cannot afford Live. A younger cousin in my family faces that exact dillema.

[Tarvis123]

My only problem with PSN is it seems like they cap my download speed to roughly 75-80% of what my connection speed is - and it's been like that since I've owned a PS3 when my connection was a lot slower. I even have NAT 1 set up on the PS3 and still have the problem. For instance, last month, it took me 50 minutes to download the same demo on PS3 that took around 35 minutes on Xbox Live. I haven't downloaded enough on my Vita to see if it is the same way, but the PSP had an equally slow download speed for me.

Otherwise, it basically comes down that I have a couple friends with a PS3, but far more with an Xbox, so it usually gets picked as the console I buy games for. Does Plus even have a party system yet or was that scrapped/still in planning? It's probably the best feature of Xbox live for my friends and I, and we've really been spoiled by it.

[Vandalsquad]

My own biggest gripe with Live was requiring it for MP gaming. That just seems wrong to me. Some people are on hard times and cannot buy a lot of games. I know a few. They buy a game like Battlefield 3, are really looking forward to it, and they are stuck playing the SP because they also cannot afford Live. A younger cousin in my family faces that exact dillema.

If they can afford a 360, Battlefield 3, and a constant Internet connection times can't be that tough. But I wish multiplayer games where free to play over xbox silver, and I wish that PSN+ gave you some other option with the games it gives you if you stop paying for + instead of not being able to play them again.

Also PSN need to do something about the speeds, I don't connect mine to the net for this reason. System and game updates are a joke compared to Microsoft infostructure.

[mattmatik]

Next Gen consoles are coming soon. It took Sony all that time to get something that is slightly better than Live.

Microsoft had a little bit of a lead-in though with LIVE on Xbox. I have no doubt PSN/LIVE will be neck and neck on next-gen.

One of the other things that just ****ed me off about Gold is the damn ads and its getting worse and worse. So, I'm paying for MP, I'm paying to stream from other places where I already pay a sub, AND I'm being bombed with ads? Not cool.

[ahhell]

At least Xbox live wasn't compromised numerous times exposing millions of users confidential data. That's a little more important to me than giving me a bunch of "free" games that I wouldn't play anyway.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

If they can afford a 360, Battlefield 3, and a constant Internet connection times can't be that tough. But I wish multiplayer games where free to play over xbox silver, and I wish that PSN+ gave you some other option with the games it gives you if you stop paying for + instead of not being able to play them again.

Also PSN need to do something about the speeds, I don't connect mine to the net for this reason. System and game updates are a joke compared to Microsoft infostructure.

Although I did read my post back and I said "buy, " actually Battlefield 3 was a Christmas present from myself and my wife. I was just using it as a real example, as it can indeed happen, even if you think otherwise, I did not think someone would actually have the nerve to question some people hit hard times economically. In fact it was the first new game they owned since last Christmas, other then that, all they can ever get are used games from trade ins. And the 360 was a Christmas present from all of the family 2 years prior to that. So yeah, times can be that tough for some people, but way to pass judgement on someone else's situation without knowing anything about it. Like do you even know that his father lost his job on December 10th, 2 weeks before Christmas? No, you do not.

[still1]

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.

Are you forgetting something??? Xbox released 1 year earlier than PS3... so yes they sell equally.

Infact the difference was higher before and PS3 has caught up to just 3 million now.

Also, don't forget the high failure rate of xbox at initial stage. people bought new one just because old one died.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

ive been a PSN+ user for just over a year now. The 1st year i only paid $35 b/c there was some Amazon sale. This year, i used a gift card so i got the service for free. Overall, i think it's worth $35, but not $50. Some would argue that the 'free' games make it worth the cost, but i dont agree. most of the offerings, imo, are not interesting. I'll never play:

• Bloodrayne Betrayal
  
• Outland
  
• Ratchet & Clank All 4 One
  
• Space Marine
  
• Saints Row 2
  
• Renegade Ops
  
• Pac-Man Championship Edition DX
  
• Choplifter
  
• Sideway
  
• Just Cause 2*
  
• Gotham City Impostors*
  
• Hard Corps Uprising*
  
• Zombie Apocalypse*
  
• Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown*
  
• (Borderlands will be added in September)
  

It's just that these games arent interesting to me. Sure, others will play the hell out of them, but they arent for me. Now, other games have been offered, and I've liked them. I especially like the Plus features such as Cloud storage, Beta access and Auto-updates. Those are great features.

As for Xbox Gold, ive never seen the value. $60 a year for features that i should get for free? no thanks.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

My only problem with PSN is it seems like they cap my download speed to roughly 75-80% of what my connection speed is - and it's been like that since I've owned a PS3 when my connection was a lot slower. I even have NAT 1 set up on the PS3 and still have the problem. For instance, last month, it took me 50 minutes to download the same demo on PS3 that took around 35 minutes on Xbox Live. I haven't downloaded enough on my Vita to see if it is the same way, but the PSP had an equally slow download speed for me.

unfortunately Vita's wireless speed isnt very good. The "internet connection test" only ever hits 8-10Mbits on my 30Mbit connection. Downloading big games will take hours.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

My only problem with PSN is it seems like they cap my download speed to roughly 75-80% of what my connection speed is - and it's been like that since I've owned a PS3 when my connection was a lot slower. I even have NAT 1 set up on the PS3 and still have the problem. For instance, last month, it took me 50 minutes to download the same demo on PS3 that took around 35 minutes on Xbox Live. I haven't downloaded enough on my Vita to see if it is the same way, but the PSP had an equally slow download speed for me.

Otherwise, it basically comes down that I have a couple friends with a PS3, but far more with an Xbox, so it usually gets picked as the console I buy games for. Does Plus even have a party system yet or was that scrapped/still in planning? It's probably the best feature of Xbox live for my friends and I, and we've really been spoiled by it.

You may have made a typo, but NAT 2 is what is required on the PS3 to show all the ports PSN will use for traffic are going to correctly open.

[LaP]

Don't forget that some of these gold features are not avalaible outside of USA. Anyway last time i checked. I cancelled my subscription 1 year and an half ago and back then i did not have access to evertyhing USA had. Might have changed since then tough.

Having a family and being in my mid 30ies it's harder and harder for me to justify paying to play games online after i already paid for the game itself. I bought MoP and will probably seldomly play it for 2-3 months mainly to see old friends again (my account is curently closed). But that probably will be the last online game i pay to play.

I simply can't justify paying for the console, internet access, the actual games and then the online part of the games. Specially since to this day no game provided me a cheaters/exploit free environment. Halo has always been full of cheaters.

[Jose_49]

So, I need to pay to get Automatic Patching/Firmware-Updates? :p

[Ottawa Gamerz]

well xbox live vs psn + what do i use?? u may ask i love xbox live and the psn network is crap allways was allways will be.

what do u get with live that psn network doesnt give u well lets check

1.live decated servers for the game your playing psn network doesnt do that

2.live get content that psn user dont

3.well psn users get free old games wgaf

4.the only thing ps3 is good for is u can borrow ur friends games and play them xbox cant

ill take live over psn+ anyday ohh yea last but not lease ps3 hacked xbox ever ding ding ding

i declare live the best and if u look right live 39 for a year on specail ever month just look at the flyers u get at home with all the specials

i never see psn on specail because its sucks... my 2 cents

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

well xbox live vs psn + what do i use?? u may ask i love xbox live and the psn network is crap allways was allways will be.

what do u get with live that psn network doesnt give u well lets check

1.live decated servers for the game your playing psn network doesnt do that

2.live get content that psn user dont

3.well psn users get free old games wgaf

4.the only thing ps3 is good for is u can borrow ur friends games and play them xbox cant

ill take live over psn+ anyday ohh yea last but not lease ps3 hacked xbox ever ding ding ding

i declare live the best and if u look right live 39 for a year on specail ever month just look at the flyers u get at home with all the specials

i never see psn on specail because its sucks... my 2 cents

That is not true. In fact, the majority if not all PS3 1st party titles run on dedicated servers.

One of the oldest PS3 MP titles (it might even of been the 1st Sony game), Warhawk, famously used clusters of PS3s for their dedicated severs and even let the gamers run their own dedicated servers from their own PS3.

http://www.gamingnex...FullNews&I=5386

[Tarvis123]

You may have made a typo, but NAT 2 is what is required on the PS3 to show all the ports PSN will use for traffic are going to correctly open.

NAT 1 is when the PS3 is hooked directly to the modem without any firewalls of any kind between them. It's "better" than NAT 2 in regards to that no ports are blocked. Regardless, I've run both NAT 1 & 2 but neither make any difference in my slowness on the PSN network.