It's [current year] does it make sense to pay to play online?
Console players and PC players live up to different standards. You can see it on the kind off warm to positive reception No Mans Sky got when it was released on PS4, while it was torn to bits when it was launched on PC, besides the PC performance/problems.
Also the title is kind of misleading, its 60$ for 12 months, and 9.99 a month, idk how much is right now, so couldnt tell if its more or less.
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Well let's be fair now. There hasn't been a ongoing deluge of buggy, shallow first-person survival games on consoles this generation so NMS is a novelty.
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Are you saying that procedurally generated buggy stuff which its gameplay is based on gathering resources to improve things to gather more resources hasn't been overdone?
:O
I don't believe you.
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He's saying they barely exist on console. The Steam market is over-saturated with crappy indie survival games in early access. While there are tons of indie games ported to console, most of them are decent games since Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have some sort of quality control while Steam's Greenlight program has flooded the store with garbage.
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exactly, thats the point, for console users Nomanski is a breath of fresh air, for pc is nothing too much better than all the other space exploration games out there, and some of them do things more interestingly than Nomanski, like Space Engine's amazing universe generator, or Space Engineers ship building, and RimWorld and Rodina and who know what other games, aim to be Nomaski for less than 30$.
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Is Nomanski some Russian/Polish knock-off of No Man's Sky?
...I'll see myself out:P
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Hope some russian dev stoles your idea!! That name lol
Space, Survival, Procedural generated things, bright colors palette, bugs, and the dark center of the megaverse!
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PlayStation sucks now that you have to have it to play online. I pay good money for my games, I should use everything on it.
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How much was it before?
Edit: Thank you for the quick responses peasants.
Why would you even pay for that?
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PS+ comes with the "instant game library" service. 6 free games each month, or something like that.
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One could argue they are not free games if you're paying 60 bucks.
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Not to mention that usually they're terrible games
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Actually the titles on PS4 PS+ are actually typically quite decent.. Didn't notice any AAA titles but such is the nature of the beast.
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As a PS+ subscriber who owns both a PS4 and a Vita, I disagree. Probably one month out of every 3 or 4 there is a good indie game included in the lineup, but most months I never end up touching any of the Plus games. Looking at the list you linked, it looks like the ratio was better at the beginning of the PS4 lifespan, but I just started subscribing a year ago, and it's been terrible since then. Partially this might just be due to my personal taste in games, but I have yet to have gotten a game from PS Plus that I've played much, with the exception of Rocket League.
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I've never looked it over, but it doesn't seem too bad.
Outlast was a great game.
NBA2K16 is good.
Gat out of Hell
Valiant Heart was great.
I could keep going but I think I won't. There are dozens of good games on there. I would venture to say 75% + of those games are pretty highly rated.
I still wouldn't pay it to rent a game, but they are getting quality games there.
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Not a bad list of games, however soon after they're free for PS+ members, almost every title on that list was released in a HumbleBundle or sold for incredibly cheap. You also don't have to pay for online services and the games are yours forever.
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I was thinking more as opposed to "Steam/Origin/Uplay or whateve that let you play online for free".
But those have free games as well, so I suppose my point doesn't hold.
Oh well, I don't have a PS(whatever) anyway, so I don't really care.
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No. Also, shit like this is why I'll never waste my money on a console.
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On that at least we can agree. Unless I got a financial windfall I doubt I'll ever own a console again and I've not owned one since SNES.
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+1 This and the fact that games tend to be cheaper for the pc.
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"PlayStation Plus: Free Games"
Pay to get free games... Uhh... Okay then. That's pissing on consumers' heads and calling it rain, methinks.
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PSN is free to play for everyone who have a PS system.
PS+ is a service inside PSN, where, obviously, it is a plus.
I really don't get what you are talking about...
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As a member, you will continue to enjoy the benefits and features that enable shared experiences, such as online multiplayer, free games, and exclusive discounts.
That?
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You were right in PS3 times.
But with PS4, you need to pay to be able to find all those people who fucked your mom.
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hum... looks like not buy a PS4 was the best decision I ever made... I hope people boycott such bullshit.
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If console gamers were boycotting for that reason then no one would have bought a XBox 360.
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but if I remember well, that was the main reason people in brazil did boycott xbox.
most xbox buyers here only bought because it was easy to crack and pirate stuff...
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Could be! I was late to the console wars, but when I had to choose between what most friends had (XBox) and something that also replaced my broken DVD player (PS3), I went with the later. The free multiplayer they offered at the time was a nice bonus, but I ended up getting a PS+ subscription anyway.
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that's kinda sad actually. it is like fuck the rest of the world, except me because privileges. :(
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Elitism, yes, most likely. It has always been very strong in video gaming and associated communities, to be honest.
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if you gib me all yer moneyz I'll gib u a free gamez
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I will not pay a subscription to play games online. I don't play many online games, but if they started charging to play PC games online, I wouldn't play any of them.
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But that's if you buy every single one (which no one forces you to) and you keep the games (because they are yours, not rented to you) when you stop paying and online is free.
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^this + you can gift the games you're not interested in, and they also give you DRM-free versions for some of the games.
Monthly makes a lot more sense than PS+
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Not to mention you get something like two-three times as many games in a single Humble Monthly than you do from a month of PS+.
Also do you lose previous rentals if you skip PS+ for a month, or do you really need to pay continuously for it?
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If you stop paying your access to all the PS+ games you might had is revoked. I think.
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Difference being Humble will not remove the games from your library after 3-15 months.
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Oh, now I remember another reason why I switched to PC.
Did they end up making it mandatory for PS3 too or is it just PS4?
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Congrats, you're rich! :P
We PC gamers are poor cause GabeN took all our money.
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Am? I? Rich?
To be fair it all depends on the country you're living in. I doubt I'd consider getting a console if I was living in, let's say Poland.
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depends where you live, of course. a ps4 here is over $600.
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I was mostly joking, but yeah, in many places PC gaming is cheaper.
For me the price difference between buying games on PC or doing it on console is quite absurd, with sales and bundles PC games have become way more convenient. And also consoles are kinda expensive here, a decent PC costs barelly a little more.
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Consoles as hardware are usually cheaper (unless you're getting potato, not a PC that can play 1080p), but console games usually have $60 price-tag even in 3rd world countries, while PC releases can be significantly cheaper (like Doom, I can get it here, from retail store, without any sale, for around $30, depending on exchange rates).
On the other hand, after buying game for $60, you can sell it week later for $50...
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Here a PS4 costs between $650 and $900 depending where you buy it.
Or I can spend a (proportionaly) little more and buy a PC. (I'm not counting the screen cause that's not really fair, nobody counts the TV when buying a console)
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I bought a PS3 back in 2009... my best friend (and roommate at the time) and I were going our separate ways. I'd say she lost her mind, but that's making a big assumption that she had one in the first place...
Anyway, I got it for the bluray player. Sincerely. It was the best on the market at that time. And, so, that's how I justified it to myself. I bought some games, played a few but not much... mostly just an hour or three at most (Infamous, NHL 09, RDR, Fight Night 3, Uncharted, etc... Flower was actually my favorite) I never could get into the PS3 for some reason. I don't like the interface, I don't like the controllers... and then they killed PSHome or whatever the online virtual world was after I'd spent like $25 there, so I was a bit miffed. I WANT MY TRON APARTMENT BACK.
Still, I got a good deal on PS+ for a year Christmas of 2013... Had it for a year, barely used it.
My PS3 now collects dust... because I got an Xbox One with a Kinect this spring. And, in total opposition to my PS3 experience, I've logged so many hours in Forza games and other games that I feel like I already got my money's worth. And it'll play BluRays, too...
But, one thing the consoles have in common is that you have to pay to play multiplayer online. :( Is it stupid? IMO. Games are already hellishly more expensive on consoles as it is. Steam lets you play online for free, but they get a cut of every game license sold. I'm not sure how Microsoft and Sony deal with third party games being sold. Do they get a cut?
If so, why the charge to maintain an online multiplayer network? Hell, even BLIZZARD lets you play on Battlenet for FREE.
Good thing I don't multiplayer.
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Steam lets you play online for free
Because that's always been the case on PC. There was no need nor justification for a subscription service while users were able to host their own dedicated servers. Valve is not a nexus institution to PC as a platform like MS and Sony are for their consoles. There's no one at the top and center to seek a rent on basic functionality. Not that there haven't been attempts.
but they get a cut of every game license sold. I'm not sure how Microsoft and Sony deal with third party games being sold. Do they get a cut?
Steam gets a cut from every license sold through their store. Not from every game sold on the whole PC platform. MS and Sony collect cuts from every disc sold on store shelves as part of the publishing license. Hence the whole war on used games a few years back.
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Steam gets a cut from every license sold through their store. Not from every game sold on the whole PC platform.
That was implied within the context of the thread.
MS and Sony collect cuts from every disc sold on store shelves as part of the publishing license. Hence the whole war on used games a few years back.
That answers the question. Good to know.
Since I don't do a lot of online multiplayer, I had to look up the Steam multiplayer service and it appears it's just a matchmaking service between players either on games that can be hosted on a player's computer, or for servers run on rented space online. This would kind of explain why MS and Sony are charging for their multiplayer functionality.
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MS and Sony charge for multiplayer functionality because they hold the keys to the gates, not because they host MP sessions on their own hardware. There is no intrinsic technical reason why consoles can't connect to or even host dedicated servers, or use a non-MS/Sony network to do it.
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Console games also use P2P connection in many of their games or publisher-owned servers (like Battlefield using EA servers), using MS or Sony servers is more of an exception than rule.
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They also collect cuts on every game sold through their online store. They get a cut every time a publisher sends them a new set of files, be it an update or a patch; this is the reason console games get patched less often than PC games, because it costs a heap of money.
In short, MS and Sony attach a fee on everything they can when it comes to game distribution.
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Wtf, that sounds highly counterproductive from the console's standpoint o.O evil world
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It's actually not that terrible, because unlike Steam, they have an insanely high demand of quality to even let a game be distributed on the system. It has to be in a fully playable state. This is one of the reasons No Man's Sky is such a hit on PlayStation, as console players had almost zero of the survivor genre that is so widespread on PC, as almost titles like H1Z1 or DayZ are in such a state that neither Sony, nor MicrtoSoft would never let such buggy messes on their platforms.
The patching fee is also a great incentive for devs to actually finish and test the damned game. Of course it still doesn't stop some games from being released half-finished, with a lot of patches coughBorderlandscough, but that is not as terrible as, say, Blizzard games or the infamous King of All Patches, Quake II.
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they have an insanely high demand of quality to even let a game be distributed on the system.
Skyrim is on PS and it's a mess. And tackling fees and those supposed high standards only hurt the variety of titles available, which in the end hurts the consumer.
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Skyrim is playable, you just can't finish all quests. It's not the first of such games. Plus don't forget that the hype Bethesda generates just by existing makes more money than either console manufacturer would allow.
But as buggy as Bethesda's developed games are and as incompetent their bunch is in coding, they made a product that can be played… more or less. So it's not like No man's Sky PC launch: "hey, here is your game, and, oh, by the way, it won't run on many systems since we compiled it that way, thanksbye!"
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It's actually not that terrible, because unlike Steam, they have an insanely high demand of quality to even let a game be distributed on the system.
You may call it quality control. I call it the AAA industry crowding out the cheaper (and often superior) competition. Also, "quality control". I'm sorry but technical problems are the norm these days, not the exception. We're long past Nintendo's Seal of Quality. (Not that even that was a guarantee back in the day.)
The patching fee is also a great incentive for devs to actually finish and test the damned game.
Or to again crowd out smaller devs who can't afford to pay a fee to fix their own product. Which will need patching because software development these days generally devolves into a Griswold-style clusterfuck because that's just how programming is.
Skyrim is playable, you just can't finish all quests.
I'd call that a broken mess, considering finishing quests is kind of the core loop of the game.
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The core of Skyrim is dungeon crawling and hoarding. You just get quests that mark more dungeons on the map to loot. The quests as actual content is so irrelevant in Elder Scrolls that it is incredibly difficult to find a TES player who could actually tell you the plot of any of the games. :)
I tried to not use the word quality control, because they make a lot of exceptions if the publisher is big and rich enough, and the publishers also may choose to cut a lot of corners just to bag in the pre-release and first week money. But at least the bare minimum requirement of being able to start up the game and play it without it crashing all the time remains. Even Fallout 3 is playable, even though it does crash on consoles as well. But, again, the amount of sheer bullshit Bethesda can get away with is staggering, it may even surpass the amount if shit people excuse to Blizzard.
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Counterproductive if you're thinking about the health of the medium and consumer base.
For MS/Sony and the AAA publishers it's a gold mine. They can sell under-powered hardware. They collect cash from subscriptions, advertisements, licenses, and DLC trinkets. They corral millions of fans who will market their stuff and make excuses on their behalf, regardless of quality or even their own rational self interest (fanboyism). They make their investments back not on positive critical feedback and word-of-mouth but artificially generated hype (Destiny, Nomanski, etc.). They have the entire space in a vice grip on every level: Hardware, software, distribution, marketing, culture, legal, creative.
They have this total control, this de facto oligopoly between themselves. And as happens with every monopoly or oligopoly, quality of product goes down. Or at least improves at a drastically lower rate. So what one gets is an endless turnover of dudebro shooters and open-world tower climbers, season passes plus micro-transactions after a $60 entrance fee, Skinner Boxes substituting for actual game play, drastically inferior backwards compatibility, Street Fighter V launching with half a feature set and getting away with it. And console gamers lap this shit up. To them, this is The Way To Play.
Compare to the PC market. Technology advances constantly. Ideas are continuously experimented. There are actual consequences for anti-consumer bullshit. The reasons that cause the great glut of lame shit in the Steam store also allow for a glut of the innovative, the niche, the sincere. All because there is no confluence of controlling interests at the top who can exclude competition from below. Intel and Nvidia may dominate desktop CPU's and GPU's, but AMD is a viable competitor who consumers will turn to if Int/Nv fuck up. Microsoft owns Windows, but it's not a closed platform, and MS's recent efforts to transform it into one are backfiring. There is competition. There are open standards. There is consumer revolt. PC gaming is a free market whereas consoles are a stagnant corporatist money farm.
Is it any surprise then that what advancements do occur on consoles happen because PC gaming forces the issue?
-edit- An accurate representation of how console gaming works.
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As I already commented elsewhere: "Good. Makes it even easier not to reconsider resubscribing."
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Hah, I know where you posted this, and I'll repost the same thing too.
You can blame Sony’s cockiness and lack of operational margins as a whole group for this. The Scorpio announcement caught them red-handed and rumours were that a great number of motherboards (or logic boards for nomenclature related easily irked people) had already been manufactured for this year’s "likely" Neo holiday launch. (also responsible for the dismal state of No Man’s Sky at launch) The XBOX ONE S has done tremendously better than expected even though a plethora of "opinion pieces" and articles (this was aimed at Ben Kuchera's delusional partisanry he's had since his personal meltdown at Ars) were written about its obsolence. (Will we get the same outcry for the new PS4 slim if it doesn’t or does support HDR and 4K? I’m eager to see that) Things don’t exist in a vacuum and Sony corporate culture still runs through SCE and it’s catching up to them again so they do what they do best, as always, meddle with people behind the scenes, devs and publishers (and their constant meddling in my field) while passing on the costs to the consumer who will defend them til kingdom come.
I’m just hoping MS doesn’t do some kind of dick move to adjust the prices accordingly (and I'll prevent the same kind of fanboyish rebukes like Ofx's about the price already being 60$ for XBL in the US since it was his only angle of retort). 10$ (or 20$) doesn’t seem like much but it does trickle down in different ways on either side of the business. Inflation doesn't have anything to do with it as the prices related to the services necessitated by PS+ have either been frozen or have gone down.
Anyway, PlebStation awesome XBOX bad PC better than both etc etc blah blah blah.
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Yeah, sony is going to sell a console with native 4k, 60 constant fps for 400 bucks. kek.
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He's referring to video playback, not gaming. There is some merit to the idea. The PS2 was a good and affordable DVD player when it came out. That fed into it's success as a platform. PS3 pushed Blu-Ray. Though it was, uh, hardly affordable. (Never forget). Still, it might have been the deciding factor in the blu-ray/HDDVD format war. And at the moment the list of 4k Bluray compatible players is small. As in, three players, including the XboneS. The Panasonic is not out yet, and the Samsung's is $500. Egads.
Though my two cents is that there's no point in investing in 4K HDR when a) 4k HDR screens from LG and Samsung go for something like $5000 and b) HDR isn't even an agreed standard yet, and we've yet to see what DolbyVision offers. There are android media players that can play Netflix at 4k (and the Nvidia Shield TV can do HDR as well), but that's another matter entirely.
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Keep in mind Sony is also a media company and produces or publishes a number of the films you get on Blu_Ray...all they had to do was withhold that from being made on the HDDVD format (which they did) and now the competition's library looks slim. So yeah Sony is a bit big for it's britches and they can basically determine what direction these things move.
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They alone wrecked Toshiba's try at a HD DVD, even if Toshiba partnered with Warner.
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They could, because most the price of most consoles is either matching the manufacturing and shipping costs or goes way under it. Consoles are using a model where you lose on the initial hardware but make it up big time everywhere else. (Even industry uses this tactic, this is how for example TetraPak cornered the largest chunk of packaging business.)
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Consoles are no longer loss leaders, that was true some generations ago. Not anymore.
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Plus a controller that managed to get past a 18-year-old design, and games that managed to go beyond the generic TPS/FPS design approach. Wii and WiiU are probably the only things we can still call a "video game console" and not a "dumbed down PC".
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It's the only thing that at least tries something different, with varying degrees of success (The motion+ was decent, the 1st wiimotes not so much) but at least they took the tangent and developed a system that has something to offer apart from stupid exclusives.
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Why own a console when you will soon be able to emulate any device on PCs
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Jaguar on XBone and PS4 is an x86 architecture. It refers to the actual engineering design, not the instruction set (x86-64).
ARM is also relatively straight-forward to emulate.
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I can't even emulate PS2 games properly. Ratchet and Clank was a mess.
Xbox and PS3, PS4 games are not available either.
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Xbox is still unemulated. But most of the worthwhile titles had Windows versions I think.
Xenia is a WIP X360 emulator. Apparently it's progressing quite nicely.
PS3 won't be emulated for a long fucking time, though there are attempts in the works. That CELL architecture was a fucking bitch to develop for, let alone emulate.
And there's so little point to emulating Xbone and PS4 since there are only a handful of exclusives on both. It'll be easy to do so eventually since they're both glorified AMD APU machines.
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Main reason I gave up xbox live some 5 years ago. I WILL NOT pay to play a game I already paid for. I dont play any subscription based games either. Fuck any pay to play system.
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I used to play my PS4 more than PC as that's what my friends were on.. but now they're all switching over and I think this has been the final blow for me to give up on console..
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So there are 13 console peasants here (they voted yes)
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I have 4 years of PS+ stocked up, so no big deal right now. An additional $10 PER YEAR isn't that big of a deal.
Also, as far as I know, playing online is free using Playstation 3 and 4. You do not have to be a subscriber to use multiplayer services.
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You have to pay to play online on PS4 (not in PS3 I think) and if you stop paying I regret to inform you that you will not be able to access those PS+ games you stocked up on.
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I knew that about the games. Every year we buy 2 more years of subscription, so that's not an issue.
I don't play consoles online, so that's not an issue either..
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Oh, I thought you didn't so wanted to give you a heads up just in case so you didn't have a bad surprise.
also, I thought you could only buy it yearly? Or that's not the case.
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When you buy a subscription CARD, you get a code on the back to redeem on the PSN. If you redeem several, they stack up. That's the only way I've ever gotten a subscription. Got a card with my PS4 when I first bought it, and a couple more each year around tax season when we have a nice chunk of free money. The games each month are worth it, since we have several people in our household (all gamers).
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Didn't the old PS+ let you keep the games if you unsubbed for a little bit and then resub?
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Pretty sure if you resub you'll get your games back, yes.
But if you go on vacation for a month and decide to kill your subscription and someone will want to play your subbed games, he's in a bad surprise...
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I will throw in that some games dint require PS+ to play online, though they are scarce. Also I dont mind the fee as long as I'm getting at least one great game each month. I got Yakuza 5 this month and I love it to death. Stacking up the good "free" games usually pays off the fee for the year within around 3-4 months.
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PS+ and xbox live subs go on sale regularly for like $35 so there really no reason for you to even pay the current price for it so ya that price change should not matter.
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PS+ is a good deal overall but fuck me for the price jump. Gotta remember to resub before it hits (current sub just ended :P).
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http://blog.us.playstation.com/2016/07/27/playstation-plus-free-games-for-august-2016/
Isn't this a bit ridiculous when you have clients such as Steam/Origin/Uplay or whateve that let you play online for free? Also aren't many games p2p anyhow, or do the vast majority have dedicated Sony servers?
Still.
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