Many people were looking forward to Ken Kutaragi's keynote speech to fill in the many blanks, and with only 2 months to go until launch, give details. Unfortunately most of the speech was filled with technical details on GPS, GMS, shopping, banking, networking, and so forth. A few noteworthy things, demos will cost $1, you will be able to download 16bit games (MegaDrive Genesis, and PC Engine TurboGrafx) over the network, and share them with friends. During a short Q&A it was revelaed that the 20gig version will now also feature HDMI, and will receive a price reduction (from 535 to $430) in Japan, as a result of consumer complaints about the high price.
It's all about the choice mate, you don't have to pay for a live pack to get online. Let's face it, you're paying live for demo's and a matchmaking service, since the rest costs points on marketplace.
Mabye if you download more than 80-100 demo's a year then xbox live works out cheaper.
Arthas wrote:It's all about the choice mate, you don't have to pay for a live pack to get online. Let's face it, you're paying live for demo's and a matchmaking service, since the rest costs points on marketplace.
Mabye if you download more than 80-100 demo's a year then xbox live works out cheaper.
Remember, all about the choice folks
What a crock of shit, the choice of hardware is one thing.
But charging for demos is a crock of shit. The Xbox Live Silver subscription is free and you are able to download all the demos for free on LIVE.
offline wrote:I thought a demo was a marketing tool. Why would someone want to pay a company to try their game in the hope you will purchase it?
For instance mech just keeps the demo version of fight night on his hdd so he can play it when friends come around. Stuff like that, i guess publishers want to prevent gamers playing the demo a little too much. I know they're planning on making demos time limited on ps3 to prevent stuff like that. They might even start doing it on 360 if ms allows it.
Also the charge might be related to bandwidth/hosting. Do you think all that bandwidth ms have for live demos is free? Someone has to pay for it, silver subscribers enjoy the free downloads thanks to gold subscribers. Nothing is free in this world, you gotta pay for it somewhere along the line. I just find it ironic how sony has been harping on about free online, yet they've presented in the last couple days some microtransaction options that are just horrible.
lestat wrote:mech just keeps the demo version of fight night on his hdd so he can play it when friends come around.
Isn't that free advertising then? One download gets multiple gamers playing and possibly wanting the game. Seems like some good, free advertising. The more people who see it the better it is for everyone.
I can understand the bandwidth issue but as I suggested, shouldn't the cost of advertising be placed on the distribution companies? For every download of an EA/whatever title, they should cough up the costs involved.
If I had a choice between:
a) free online games, pay to play demos, or
b) free demos, pay to play online,
I'd choose a.
Well if the money they make from people paying for demos keeps online gaming free, I'm for it. :)People with lots of money to burn deserve to have to pay imo if they see no problem paying for it. People pay for what they think something is worth to them personally. So if they can't stand old games due to the shit graphics they can say rip off, but if another gamer prizes the simplicity of pureness of a retro classic that they have been trying to track down on ebay for ages at decent cost is happy he can finally pay for this treasure online, he should be allowed to pay for it and people can say to him "what a rip off dude, you actually paid for that?" all they want while he smiles because of the time he saved just downloading it - no worry about the cartridge battery dying, finding the roms, or dusting off ancient consoles that may no longer work. (money not being a problem as he is a diehard fan of that specific title)
It's a case of "one man's trash is another man's treasure" or something like that. People apreciate and value different things for different reasons.
"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." -Shigeru Miyamoto
offline wrote:I thought a demo was a marketing tool. Why would someone want to pay a company to try their game in the hope you will purchase it?
For instance mech just keeps the demo version of fight night on his hdd so he can play it when friends come around. Stuff like that, i guess publishers want to prevent gamers playing the demo a little too much. I know they're planning on making demos time limited on ps3 to prevent stuff like that. They might even start doing it on 360 if ms allows it.
Also the charge might be related to bandwidth/hosting. Do you think all that bandwidth ms have for live demos is free? Someone has to pay for it, silver subscribers enjoy the free downloads thanks to gold subscribers. Nothing is free in this world, you gotta pay for it somewhere along the line. I just find it ironic how sony has been harping on about free online, yet they've presented in the last couple days some microtransaction options that are just horrible.
I for one do not mind paying $8 a month for the Xbox Live service.
If the time ever comes that wil be free, but we will have to put up with shitty advertising, i will still gladly pay a monthly fee to have the ad free version.
