Comment

Comment on PlayStation Plus price increase announced for new customers

The PS3 offered free online multiplayer with no subscription required, and at the time it seemed unlikely that players would ever accept paying simply to access online gaming. Then Xbox introduced Xbox Live subscriptions, and the industry shifted in that direction. Looking back, I underestimated how willing the gaming community would be to normalize recurring fees for online access and now paid online services have become the standard across the industry.

source

Sort:hotnew top

RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Xbox Live was $49.99 per year in 2002. The PS3 didnt release until 2006.

Xbox Live included extra services not included on the PS2’s attempt at networked play. On the PS2, developers had to manage their own game networking infrastructure via their own private servers. Nothing was built into the PS2 console, and it did not have support for anything that game developers did not implement into their own games themselves. This would ultimate result in each developer “reinventing the wheel” with their own implementation of basic online features.

With Xbox Live, Microsoft provided developers with a universal networking framework and API, including built in features like a friends list and DLC support. That extra infrastructure Microsoft provided costs money, so a subscription was introduced. You were paying for the extra features and infrastructure that PS2 developers and publishers handled on their own (and thus was baked into the cost of the game).

As a user of both when they were new, I will also add anecdotally that Xbox Live was significantly more stable than PS2 networking. Nintendo also had a free online service in the mid 2000s, and it was horrible. Very poor connection stability, very susceptible to cheating and immense latency as almist every game was basically P2P.

source
- NastyNative@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Yeah my point exactly PS was giving us free access to online 4 years after xbox started charging for it. The anti gaming console!
  
  source