FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts

re: FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts

SNAKE75 — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:44:08 GMT

whoopity dooo! live is down again after another flawless update by the xbox live team. sorry for my rudeness major, and it doesnt bother me that much... accept i get to hear all my sony fanboy friends laughing and pointing fingers. lets try and get this crap under control major. not every major/MINOR update should maxipad XBL's flow.

re: FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts

Adam XIII — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:44:08 GMT

Yay, i finally feel privileged. But i think it's right, after all, money talks.

re: FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts

Magnus — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 14:55:35 GMT

I'm going to quote someone else here since it mirrors my own thoughts on the matter.

So, your perspective is:

Silver members get demos just when they always would have - when the demo's ready. Gold members get an "enhanced" service where demo makers rush out a demo a week before it's ready yet miraculously manage it in such a bug free state that their new, rush product is so good they don't need to modify it to match what they used to deliver a week later and now do for Silver users?

Wow. Game makers are getting really good.

Alternatively, a year ago, Microsoft imposed an arbitrary delay on Silver users getting demos - demos that system buyers had been led to believe they got when they were ready as part of their basic purchase - in order to create a false sense of value for Gold users. Rather than face the pretty reasonable outrage of the community at the time, they hid what they did, not reminding Silver users about how they'd just had what they'd already bought from Microsoft ganked. Now, a year later, figuring a lot of people have forgotten they paid for a system with a service that promised Silver users getting demos when they were ready, they figure there won't be such a backlash. Now it's more profitable for them to say, "Hey, you're missing out. [Please don't remember we manufactured that missing out]. Buy the expensive version! [Please don't remember that you did buy that but we, uh, stripped it and gave it to a more expensive version.]"

The summary was incorrect. It should have read:

XBox Live figures less backlash, now tells Silver users how they screwed them a year ago to encourage upgrading now.

The sad thing is the number of sheep who don't get that taking something away from one service, only to make another seem better, really is a degredation of the original and not an enhancement of the newer one.

They successfully teach Microsoft:

Hey, in a year's time, why don't you release "XBox Live Platinum - With advance access to Halo 4 demos that Gold users don't get, all for $19.99/month"?

The sheep will then see Platinum as an "upgrade" despite the fact they bought a system with Silver that was meant to have demos when they arrive, then upgraded to Gold to get them, and now have to upgrade yet again to Platinum.

I have a 360 and the free Silver membership which, as far as I can tell, is worth exactly what I pay for it. There's not a lot left for Microsoft to strip from it. They can't remove store access - it just means they sell less. They can't remove their current poor demo access - it just means less sales. Take any more and they just cost themselves money.

If anything, they've already gone too far. They've hobbled so many of their games as to make them almost unplayable without a Gold account (Test Drive Unlimited requires your gamerscore to unlock the game and then ties the easy methods for doing it to the auction system that again requires Gold membership). Knowing I'll inevitably find my play experience degraded as punishment for not giving Microsoft more money each month, I buy less 360 games and more on the PC where makers like Valve manage to offer all of the services without "needing" enhanced and expensive levels of service. They create a system where I'm punished for not spending, what, half a dozen bucks a month? In exchange, I buy $20-30 less in games each month for the system because I know it's artificially hobbled. The point has already come where trying to grab money now has had a knock on effect on how much money they get overall.

The challenge is, companies like Microsoft have some numbers they can predict and see easily and some they can't.

They know: Hey, since stripping features from Silver, we're up 1m Gold accounts from our previous predictions. We make $6m a month more, high fives all around!

They see: We sold $50m in games last month. Yay us!

What they don't see: Gamers would have bought $60m in games last month but $10m in sales stayed away because Silver users knew the games would suck. There's just no way to see that number.

In their boardrooms, they're high fiving themselves for making $6m extra, there's no realization they lost $4m overall.

I worked for a game company that did something pretty similar. They milked and they milked their customers - which they always called "enhanced" service. By launching the latest milking push just before end of year numbers were in, they managed to claim they'd improved numbers and were doing great. Except the core flock they were milking dropped by a factor of about 4 over the five years I was there. Having 10 million consumers giving you $50 is MUCH better than 2.5 million giving you $60. They'd self congratulate on new ways of squeezing $10 out of their existing customers by selling them something "enhanced" but couldn't understand why their customers kept leaving and they made less and less money.

So, yeah... Taking something away from what people thought they'd already paid for, just to inflate something more expensive is ganking, it's not enhancing. Waiting a year for the backlash to die down and then using it as a sales ploy is still nothing better and doesn't suddenly make it an enhancement. Sadly, in the short term, that strategy works. Enough sheep follow, you make more money. In the long term, your sheep turn against you and you can't figure out why squeezing and squeezing them makes you less and less money.

re: FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts

Fjord — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:12:18 GMT

The big thing here is that gold account holders (like i will be, shortly) aren't really getting anything here. The material is still gonna come out on the same day, meanwhile the guy who only has a 360 for Oblivion, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Two Worlds etc. is gonna have to wait because he'd rather buy another single-player, non-online game than pay for a service he won't use.

Of course, The only people to get screwed by this have already bought the Xbox, so who cares? Essentially this is just a douche move on MS's part with almost zero possible backlash (Who's money will they lose? Mine? But I gotta play Halo). Way to be the soulless corporation we all knew you were, Microsoft.

re: FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts

Zan Long — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 17:26:15 GMT

"My Daddy always said "Son, you get what you paid for". I don't know why a Silver Member would cry about this."

Mainly it has to do with what do you realy get out of gold. multi-player games, that is about it. The ones that have stayed as silver do not realy play on-line. So gold would be of little uses. What silver dose have is marketplace. I get MS points alot. Mostly $50 = 4000. I am paying for being a silver member. The big fuss gold members have is with bandwidth. It is not becuse of silver members that there is low bandwidth. It is Microsoft. They could have up graded the bandwidth. In fact, they need to do this to keep pace. And they do have the money to do this.

re: FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts

HighDef Edition — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 13:06:34 GMT

My Daddy always said "Son, you get what you paid for". I don't know why a Silver Member would cry about this.

re: FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts

Dan Schwaynerd — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:42:24 GMT

It says enter 1 line of your address, Nothing works. I've tried everything and it says its not valid.

re: FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts

Sneck — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 09:04:41 GMT

Still no comments from Major Nelson or anyone else at M$, what a shock. I suppose they've already decided that anyone who doesn't think this is a good idea just doesn't matter as we obviously aren't the ones who are going to hand over money without thinking. The fact that some gold members also see this as a bad thing should at least make them take note.

re: FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts

monkeyplague — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 04:25:27 GMT

the dude a few weeks ago on the show said the only thing we pay for is for multi-player. therefore shouldn't silver members get access at the same exact time.

oh well. upgrade, it's worth it.

re: FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts

Robo_1 — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 13:51:28 GMT

What an incredibly petty and spiteful move by MS this is. I don't care about online gaming, so there's no point in me paying for it, so crippling the silver service further by holding back content serves to do nothing but annoy me.

A bad move, and quite frankly stunning in the face of Sony's 100 percent free service.

re: FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts

lolomg — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 11:03:33 GMT

Wake up! Gold members ARE NOT receiving any privileges here. MS is just taking privileges away from silver members. They should just keep the things as they are and give gold members some bonus things like free gamerpictures, themes, addons etc. but no they just wanna rape the silver members so they'll start paying the gold payment too.

re: FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts

dc — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 06:09:33 GMT

"This is not done to annoy our Silver members" Uh. Yes, it is. It is intentionally done to annoy Silver members in hopes they will pay for the Gold account.

re: FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts

Ralfal — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 02:38:26 GMT

Let's face it Major, it's time to quit calling it the silver account. Bronze sounds to high up for what you're giving for free too. How about calling it the copper account? Better yet, the rust account? Yeah, rust. That fits.

re: FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts

Stephen — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 01:50:01 GMT

Hello, Ok I would like to point out that until Microsoft added Live for Windows, multiplayer PC gaming was "free." So I still dont know why we as gamers (paying $60 for said games) have to pay for the internet service when we already have to pay for games, consoles, accesories, and our own ISPs. So the Microsoft entity continues to suck away our money for stuff that is technically "free." This is also stupid advertising with "free" stuff availible to gold members ahead of silver members, but dont fall for it. To Major Nelson, I know that XBL is your job and maintaining that closed network is also your job and I realize that decisions such as the gold/silver thing is also not your job but I do ask as to why Microsoft decided to create Xbox Live in the first place when on the PC side our personal computers were acting as servers/clients? I mean why do you need a closed service like XBL in the first place? -Death Jag(XBL)

re: FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts

RidinSlow — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:54:58 GMT

Oh... and how do Microsoft's Partners feel about their demos, themes, and gamerpics getting out to a much smaller audience right before the launch of their game?

Those Silver members willing to purchase a PS3 (or those that already have) can get the same demos that XBL Gold members get without feeling like Sony is pressuring them to upgrade their account.

I think that, with all the money coming in that MS could afford to setup a set of servers that are designated only for highly anticiapted demos, trailers, gamerpics, themes, et cetera. Then we wouldn't need to worry about bandwidth because these servers would only have to worry about handling requests for these certain documents.

I don't know how MS works in the background, but from where I stand it seems to me that there are other options that don't involve de-grading accounts.

re: FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts

RidinSlow — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:29:07 GMT

In my earlier post I suggested a restructure of the payments for Gold members. After reading some comments, I feel that there are some other alternatives. The reason I wanted to have a pay by the hour option was because I do not feel that I receive enough benefits as a Gold member since I do not play online a lot. In fact, achievements have made it hard to enjoy many online multiplayer because I am always running into teams that are simply there to help each other earn achievements. It's really annoying. MS should consider providing free DLC to Gold members, sending out coupons for sponsored games, and contests that are only available to Gold members. It really feels like the Gold membership is not worth cost of entry. I along with millions of others are willing to pay because we have the money and no other choice if we want to play online on the 360. However, not all of us are going to continue to pay that if there aren't incentives specific to Gold members that do not affect Silver members in ways similar to the timed releases. I have trouble understanding the value of a Gold membership outside of it's cost. What is so great about being a Gold member? I have been one since I bought my 360 near launch.