So if Windows 10 ver has FREE online play, why do we need Xbox live sub to play on X1?

Narrow minded view of the world much? Even my European friends / cousins (france) never heard that term. So I don’t know what you’re talking about, excuse our ignorance.

I was kinda expecting something more along the lines of net profit per unit for the average developer. I can believe that overall revenue across the PC market is eclipsing that of the console market, but I believe there are several prominent genres of game where

  • Each console version outsells the PC version by a wide margin; and
  • The PC version costs more to develop and (especially) QA, since it needs to run on a variety of different setups.

Mind, I guess PC gamers’ almost complete transition to digital does away with one gigantic cost, that being the physical manufacturing, distribution and retail overheads of offering the physical copies which console gamers still often doggedly insist upon. Maybe that serves up something of an ultimatum to console gamers: physical discs or free online?

You’re talking games, but not software? I’m confused.

It was a throwaway tongue-in-cheek remark that wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. Also with the way that the world tends to revolve around the US, ribbing about geographic myopia is a part of the culture that you should be used to by now.

But also, if you’ve ever been required to talk about geographic regions in any official capacity, it’s pretty hard to miss the term “Australasia”.

I said PCs make more money than consoles. I never said they sell more games. I meant the PC hardware sells more than console hardware. I do not need a long reply to explain that.

How does PC hardware sales have anything to do with free online play? Does Nvidia subsidize multiplayer servers?

In the prior paragraph you claimed that

which seems a lot more relevant, and also seems to be what the link you provided established. So I don’t know why we’re suddenly talking about hardware, which doesn’t matter at all.

Exactly, they are making as much if not MORE sales in games thus making my point that everyone else who doesn’t play games the majority if homes have a PC who will never buy games yet they still sell more than consoles at times, get it?.

I could have looked up a link to hardware sales for PC and consoles but I was pressed for time at that moment and just used the first link that popped up.

To reiterate, I was using the sales on PC that is specific to a small number of PC owners to sales on consoles that almost all owners use for games.

Yeah dude, the hardware stuff is irrelevant. If we lived in a world where people only used PCs for games, but did all kinds of work and admin stuff on consoles as well as play games, and the hardware sales reflected that, but game sales revenue was again about the same on both sides of the fence, then we’d be having exactly the same discussion about the games revenue as we are now.

I am not having that discussion you are, I was just answering your question to elaborate in my first statement about PC having more sales.

I will say though, console sales and their services directly go to funding the servers they use. It is privately controlled and managed for both security for developers and consumers. I mean by that, you are far less likely to get hacked, keylogged, DDoS’d (as an individual not a server), and harrassed or spammed. On PC however, these things are everywhere plus modding and breaking games full of cheaters which isn’t in the developers views unless stated by them of being okay.

PC is run by a global infrastructure not only catering to games so PC have that advantage but on PC without stuff like adblock, spyware all that stuff majority of regular PC users (not gamers) are hit with ads everywhere from OS stuff to just run of the mill ads that generate more than enough revenue on their own to pay for those servers.

Although I am sure one day live will be free maybe even for a one time activation or something there are reasons why it works the way it does from a business and technological standpoint whether we agree with it or not.

But that is just my opinion I do not want to continue any further debate, not that it is negative, just that I do not care enough about the subject matter. I just wanted to clear I was just saying PC hardware sells more than console hardware but we all knew that.

It’s funny how for someone so geographically knowledgeable somehow believes that North America means the United States.

In other news, the United States buys Canada and creates the world’s largest country engulfing it’s New York sized population effectively creating the United States of North America.

In all seriousness I’m not sure if it’s something new they teach in school, maybe a commonly used word where you’re from or that part of the world, but I can assure you, you’d be hard pressed to find that word to be a commonly known term.

Either way thanks for the education, at least now I know from where the sun rises.

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I game across all platforms. My take on this is that charging for online on PC is a failed venture. There are a number of reasons for this. First and foremost, competition. There are many options on the platform, many options that don’t include paying to play online. Second the value in it is not there for the PC userbase. With xboxlive you’re not just paying to play online you’re paying for the xboxlive connect infrastructure, communication, party system, voice, video uploads and downloads, and other added benefits like free games etc. All of those are irrelevant for PC users as there are already many products that come at no cost that perform the same functions.

So at the end of the day with no added value and a market full of competition it makes no sense to charge PC Users as it’s likely they will not become customers otherwise. It’s better to have them buying and playing the titles and mining whatever data you can from them than it is to lose out on customers all together.

Maybe once MS establishes a solid customer base on PC, they can devise some ways to add value to such a service that is worth the money to PC gamers, but as it stands it won’t work and I think they’re taking the smarter approach.

Cause it’s been that way for a long time, people will continue to pay for it and the main competition (Sony) does it the same way now.

However at least there’s a difference on XB1 where you get added value (ie: Rebates, free games, bonuses, ect…)

In the future I’d like it if Xblive Gold became optional for online play but remained as an option with more content (Games) attached to it.

Hmmm… I Played ranked all day Saturday

Trust me, when I say, that as an American teacher, how many U.S. citizens actually believe this is likely far more than you probably think…

There are many, many wonderfully bright Americans that help make the world a better place, but for every 1 of them, there are probably 3 Joe Schmoes who could really care less about anything and that happily live in ignorance…

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Maybe not where you’re from. That’s all.