In the futur we will have to pay to play multiplayer

I ain't gone even ask about that

Quote from Nysuatro

multiplayer games from microsoft.

yayyy halo :roll:

No GoW linux port o___________O

EDIT: Good that I don't have any M$ games (except Freelancer, but its CD is broken, therefore...). I hope they won't force OL to use their sucky system

If its mmo games ok. But i will never pay extra for multiplayer like in current fps games.

I think it depends on the service. If you also get a load of services and Microsoft host extremely fast game servers themselves then a small fee is understandable (especially with game servers becoming really expensive to run these days, meaning hosts have to pay like $100+ a month for them -- a fact many players happily ignore as it doesn't affect them), but if all you're paying for is a server browser then obviously it's not acceptable and they'll be boycotted. I heavily doubt that's the case though.

Quote from KoKo5oVaR

yayyy halo :roll:

yeah who gives a fuck

My understanding so far is that this shares gold/silver status with your xbox live account... which is a lot less annoying for xbox owners at least.

Interested to see where they go with this. Xbox Live kicks ass, but not everything will seamlessly transfer to PCs. Standardization on the PC platform is generally a good thing in my book... hope it works out well.

Quote from Thrik

I think it depends on the service. If you also get a load of services and Microsoft host extremely fast game servers themselves then a small fee is understandable (especially with game servers becoming really expensive to run these days, meaning hosts have to pay like $100+ a month for them -- a fact many players happily ignore as it doesn't affect them), but if all you're paying for is a server browser then obviously it's not acceptable and they'll be boycotted. I heavily doubt that's the case though.

you do have a load of services and fast content servers at steam (and valve of course hosts some gaming servers as well - though not all of them public) - and it is all free (ok, ingame ads now in cs16 but that doesn't take your money from your account)

hmm.....

Back when I was brand manager on Stalker and some other titles at THQ we got into this big discussion at E3 with friends from Activision and other pubs about how we can charge people access to playing MP FPS games. We talked...and talked...and talked...and realized that it just felt icky to attempt that.

Online ads for Buzz Cola in the middle of your counter-strike match? Sure...we had no problem with that. But paying for FPS play, nah.

However...

It's really not that inconceivable. However it would have to borrow from the MMO business. There would have to be some compelling reason to pay a monthly fee for a non-MMO FPS MP game. Maybe if the developers constantly added content or updates or something, then maybe it might catch on. The point is, we have all been trained on the Quake/Half-Life "free MP" constuct and by gar we like it! To change that and just start charging people for MP access would be quite jarring to the millions of PC FPS players who frag online.

However part 2...

kinda what Thrik said. Would sort of depend on the game...

Bottom line, at this point there has to be a clear value proposition for paying such fees and if publishers etc can't come up with them, the consumer won't buy into it.

If you're going to charge to play MP, then servers for MP games better be supplied and be more then badass in management and service. Furthermore, I dont care how much money it costs to service the servers, but if it is going to cost money to play the game, and the SP is anything but the best I've ever played, than I want the game dirt cheap.

I already have to pay for my fucking internet connection ... i dont want to have to pay to play the fucking games on my fucking internet connection im already paying for....

thats half the reason why i dont play games like wow that make you pay for a monthly subscription.

- 2:43 am

For a lot of people this seems to be a disaster of epic proportions, but like KFS, it doesn't really bother me at all as I'm already paying. In fact, it almost seems like a good thing to me, as it means my annual fee is going to start covering services on not only the 360, but also the PC. £40 a year might sound a lot but I don't miss it - its well worth paying for Xbox Live in my opinion. Whether the service adds anything of worth to the PC is yet to be seen, but I imagine that it will if enough games use it.

Also, from my understanding of Microsoft's stance on Live! for PC, you can play multiplayer for free, you just don't get premium features such as achievements. At least that is what is happening with Halo 2, though it wouldn't be too surprising if that changed in the future.

I would probably consider it if it were a similar price point (or tied into) Xbox Live and there were very nice servers provided internationally. I can't be the only person who's noticed that large GSPs are becoming rare due to the immense costs of hosting games these days, and that many clan servers (only affordable because they all pool into the fund) are a bit shit to play in due to a lack of professional management.

Gone are the days of services like Barrysworld, NGUK, and Blueyonder hosting about 10-20 servers per game with great management/admins, simply because they'd need so many computers to do it these days. If paying a small fee can bring that level of multiplayer quality back then I'd pay -- simple as that.

Quote from Thrik

Gone are the days of services like Barrysworld, NGUK, and Blueyonder hosting about 10-20 servers per game with great management/admins

You've opened an old wound there

Haha.

It's actually interesting that both Barrysworld and Blueyonder did try to go pay-to-play if I remember correctly, but both fell flat on their faces and still ended up having to shut down due to being unable to sustain the ever-increasing costs of hosting servers for newer games.

There's no doubt about it, hosting game servers is incredibly expensive and this is a fact that most players either aren't aware of or conveniently ignore.

As games get more complex and require more intensive processing to host, some kind of payment system is inevitable; bear in mind that the servers hosting the games require similar specs to the systems playing them with many engines. In addition to that, game servers use a massive amount of bandwidth constantly, far more than any web serer generally does -- most server hosts run on 1gbps connections, and more than one in the case of larger hosts. Yes, even in countries where bandwidth runs at an extortionate premium such as in the UK.

Without a payment system the server quality will just become intolerable as the only ones around will be hosted by clans who don't give a shit about anyone else because they can use it for matches -- nobody else is going to pay so much to host it out of the goodness of their hearts. Clans will be pretty much the only groups with an incentive to host a game server, and this is already widely becoming the case. And in my experience, most of them are shit and the admins don't care too much about outside players' enjoyment.

You can all call it unreasonable, but when you step back and think about what it takes to fill up your server browser list, you should realise that paying a few pounds per month to keep things running isn't much to ask at all -- far from it, in fact. The only requirement is that servers are indeed provided, and that they're very good (ie: plenty of well-administrated servers for each major region).

It'll take a giant like Microsoft to pull it off though, as the failures of Barrysworld and Blueyonder (both massive in the UK but unknown elsewhere) demonstrate. However, if it is pulled off properly the quality of online play would almost certainly go up as it'd all be centralised and properly managed.