Xbox Live. Is it a rip off?

I don't think its a rip off. It's free, so why not? The online feature has always been my favorite. Unless you don't play online or use netflix, don't bother.
 
Well it's not free, it's sixty dollars a year, which is the price of a brand new game. That being said PlayStation Plus is fifty dollars a year (a bit cheaper but you do still have pay a nice chunk of change for it). I will say that when I had PlayStation Plus for a year (my PS3 came with a year subscription but I never renewed it) I did feel the games that came included were, for the most part, better than what Xbox Live Games with Gold provided. However that was because Games with Gold had just started up while Plus had been going for a while, and now the new generation has come from what I understand the value of the free games you get on Xbox One and PS4 are about equal. Though, with Plus you get free games for PS4, PS3, and Vita while Gold gives you free games only for two platforms 360 and One, though with backwards compatibility you would get a lot more value out of simply owning an Xbox One and having Gold than you would having only a PS4 and having Plus.
 
So far, I'd say it isn't worth it because of the online experience. With the last few months of performance, microsoft hasn't been doing itself any favors if it wants to sell anymore live subs. I love online play but it's been pretty terrible.
 
Yeah, that definitely is true. It's gone down way too many times in the past couple of months for me to be able to honestly and full heartily be able to recommend it to anyone. It's especially horrible when you have home sharing enabled and that means you can't play any digital games that you've bought on your account.
 
Personally I don't mind paying for both subscriptions for the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox one because for what you get I do think they're worth it.

In the future though I can see the price for the service coming down though because even though in a way your paying towards the Microsoft and Sony servers, I'm pretty sure that these two giants can afford to keep them running smoothly on their own without my £110 a year or whatever it is I'm paying.
 
Totally agree with what both of you are saying - at the end of the day, it's about quality of experience. Xbox live doesn't have that right now to warrant its cost, and microsoft isn't trying to say "our bad" at all or make it right. Once servers are sorted out and you can rely on XBL, it will obviously be worth it, but I would personally say that $ for $, microsoft is losing this leg of the console war to sony until the next wave of titles comes out and the servers are more stable.
 
I think your right when you talk about Sony getting the upper hand in the console war at the moment, and even though they've had a lot of issues with the PlayStation network, when that is up and running which is about 95% of the time now, it does seem to run a lot more smoother than the Xbox service does.
 
Some days it feels like a rip off. It just depends on the game you're playing. But XBox Live makes up for it with their $1.00 monthly specials and the free game downloads. Plus I've always felt that the overall quality of XBox Live and it's amenities are far more superior than PS Network.
 
I used to feel the same about Xbox live, and in the past I've always trusted it more than the PlayStation network but this year so far, I'm not too sure and I'm beginning to change my mind.
 
I have always looked at Microsoft as a very money hungry company, especially with the way their Windows 8/10 games were ad-ridden, in-app purchase obsessed low quality rubbish that did not show any good side of gaming for Windows. With the introduction of "ads" in the start menu, I eventually gave up on Windows and switched to Mac. I also hated the unreasonably high priced peripherals and tablets they sold. Xbox Live is just something you have to deal with from a company like Microsoft and to be honest I don't really care about it because I tend to stick to singleplayer more these days. It all comes down to preferences I guess.
 
^ Ads were seriously the worst thing they could have possibly done. It was this huge scream that they don't give a shit about people playing games whatsoever, that their agenda is more important. Everybody always makes fun of advertising taking over everything, microsoft proved they don't have the respeck to not become those people
 
No matter how big a company is, and lets face it Microsoft is probably about as big as they get, they're always going to want to be bigger and make more money.

They have to walk a fine line between doing what's best for the customers, and what's best for themselves. Sometimes they get it wrong, like in this instance.
 
At this point Microsoft is the only one of the three companies you can probably even talk about outside of just gaming. Granted, Nintendo is exclusively a gaming company and Sony does a few other things but isn't particularly leading in any other market (I was looking a TV's a couple months ago and their's are just way over priced). However, I remember hearing a few months ago during the Iowa Caucus that Microsoft was working on some new polling device, not to mention they've gotten involved in other things of a political nature. It's just surreal to me that this company that makes one of my favorite entertainment devices is so involved in so many different areas of life.
 
Yeah, but that's kind of what happens when these things grow that big. Computers are a big deal for so many people and so many uses that having an advantage in any of the related markets would be worth a ton of money and a natural byproduct of what they're doing anyways
 
Companies are going to expand, and when you look at the ones like Sony, where entertainment is their forte, I'm sure that sooner or later we're going to see an all-in-one entertainment system on the market, a 60" curved Sony TV with an integrated PlayStation 5 would sell quite well I would have thought?
 
I remember hearing that the reason they don't release tvs or monitors with their equipment is that it would lose more sales than gain them, so nobody does it. The reason for this is just because if your TV breaks, it's better for everyone, business included, if you can buy one that isn't associated with just a console
 
Ok, well when I sat integrated, I meant packaged together rather than an all in one unit. So by could do something like that, the TV, the console, the surround sound amp and speakers and I think people would buy it.

People buy that now but just separately so to be able to buy it all in one as part of a deal would make sense, and its also something that Microsoft couldn't offer.
 
It's a rip-off pure and simple. It was a blatant cash-in from the start and should have been free. Look how long PC gamers have been able to play online for free. The very fact that you have to pay more $ on top of having already paid for the game itself is insulting.
 
I think a lot of people feel the same, and the only thing at the moment that makes people put up with it, is the fact that the PlayStation 4 users have to pay a subscription for that service aswell now.

If Sony all of a sudden turned round and said their service would be free, there would be a lot of unhappy Xbox ONE owners!
 
I think it is a rip off only if you don't enjoy it. It could also be seen as a way to save money on other entertainment. If you stay in 3 weekend nights a month playing Xbox Live games when you would usually go out to the bar then Xbox Live is definitely a money saver. I don't know about everyone else but the price of one night out drinking is by far more expensive than a month of Xbox live. That being said I would only call it "not worth it" if you don't enjoy it. You can't put a price tag on happiness!
 
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