Tendo City

http://www.destructoid.com/xbox-live-rai...2745.phtml

Awesome Microsoft, really going in the right direction there...

This is an industry first, a price raise on ANYTHING EVER in the gaming industry.

Seriously I'm scratching my head for ANY examples of prices doing anything BUT going down in this hobby of mine. The amazon link on that page shows plenty of cheap "new" (how do they make a profit?), but one "used". Seriously? Who's dumb enough to buy a used subscription code?

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/pricelock/default.htm

Huh... They're really being blatant about it aren't they? It's pretty sad... I'm all for market forces controlling price. There's nothing illegal about this, or really immoral, but it is... rude. I mean, again I really can't think of anything in all of gaming that's actually gone UP in price. I've been trying, and I expect GR to come in any moment with an example, but it's hard. There's no wiki page for it anyway. The thing that gets me most isn't the price raise. What must be must be there. It's the listed "features of gold" that MS has NOTHING to do with, like Netflix (which goes entirely through THEIR servers, MS doesn't pay a cent except maybe hosting the app), or Last.FM, or Facebook, or Twitter, or any of that other stuff otherwise completely free (or paid through that service itself, and STILL paid here). I'll just use my PS3 or computer for Netflix thank you (the Wii really doesn't count, we all know it's limitations when it comes to this, but even there, Nintendo's got nothing to do with it and doesn't pay a dime for you to connect to Netflix's servers). THAT is the thing that gets me. Say it costs more all you like, but when your examples are things that anyone can tell you ARE PAYING NOTHING AT ALL TO "PROVIDE", then it raises questions as to how honest that claim is. If it's really a matter of investing in server infrastructure or covering hardware costs, or if it's just the high demand, just SAY so already. Don't be dishonest about it. I'd respect this a lot more, even if I don't like it.

So yeah, advertise the features YOU are actually providing MS. In the meanwhile, maybe stop requiring gold to access stuff you don't have anything to do with?

83 cents extra per month.

Skip out on one candy bar every thirty days. You'll live.

No no I think you didn't read what I said. I think you saw a wall of text and assumed you knew what I was saying, but it's not me just ranting about a price upgrade.

I think you read my post and assumed I was responding directly to yours.

Touche!

Way too many people are getting their feathers ruffled over this. It's not a gigantic price raise. As Ryan says, you'll live. So will others. This change amounts to approximately the amount of pocket change I place into my change jar every month, if not less.

It's utterly absurd that they're charging anything at all.

I'm not sure if you know this or not but Microsoft likes money. Like, a lot. And if people are willing to give them money for something, they will charge.

Oh I know, they're exploiting those people because they don't know any better, because most of them didn't play PC games back before this stupid ridiculous stuff before. Or current, MS's attempt to institute pay online PC gaming on the market has completely failed, thankfully.

That doesn't make it any less wrong, though.

A Black Falcon Wrote:It's utterly absurd that they're charging anything at all.

Why?

I fully expect such things to cost money, and $5 a month is a totally acceptable fee, in my opinion. Not nearly as overpriced as television or wireless service.

Because the PC market rejected pay online services (for anything other than MMOs) over ten years ago as the stupid, ridiculous idea it is. Leave it to Microsoft to find a market willing to be stupid enough to pay that stuff anyway...

As I said, there's a reason Windows Live isn't exactly Xbox Live, and it's because PC gamers aren't falling for that stuff, and for good reason.

But 360 owners... $100 wi-fi adapter, hard drives that cost 5-10 times more than any other hard drive of a similar size, fees to play online... they pay that stuff, for some reason.

My entire complaint rests entirely on the fact they aren't just being honest about it. "Demand has gone up, so our costs will match it." Instead, they're pretending that it's to afford Netflix, when in reality there's no overhead MS has to deal with at all for Netflix and those other services they list like Twitter and Facebook.

Except, those MMOs cost twice as much, per month, individually, as Xbox Live does, and its service is universal. The PC platform gets to play free--but, the PC platform doesn't get nearly as many options as far as game selection goes. It almost entirely lacks in several genres.

Isn't it time we all stop pretending that the PC is a gaming platform equal to consoles? Because it isn't, and hasn't been in many years.

I know, even though consoles have come a long way towards catching up in the past decade, PCs are still much superior. :)

The PC has and always will have ONE thing consoles don't yet have. Openness. It's why I bother keeping my PC up to date at all. It's true that all the big name games are now being released on consoles. Eh. I've generally kept my console game collection more up to date anyway. However, until the big 3 allow truly custom content with no restrictions, I'm going to continue getting things like Valve and Bethesda's games on the PC. There's just no alternative if I want basically infinite extra content packs in those games.

I agree with that. My point is, a person who, forced to choose one and forsake the other, chooses the PC over consoles had better really like a certain, narrow group of genres.

Most of the best console games are also available on PC.

True, but even so it's true that there is less variety of genres in high-budget PC games than there are on consoles. It's something I've been complaining about for years, comparing the variety of '90s PC games to the serious lack of variety (genrewise) that we have today.

Still, within each of those genres there is massive depth and variety, and the genres PCs still have they do very, very well. I would say that Weltall is definitely wrong when he says that "a person who, forced to choose one and forsake the other, chooses the PC over consoles had better really like a certain, narrow group of genres." The genres on the PC are very far from narrow.

Yes, AAA PC gaming is in horrible shape compared to where it was, and the North American PC-specific gaming development industry is pretty much gone, MMO developers (and Blizzard) aside. But games from Europe have been improving in quality; few of them are well known here, but in genres like strategy games, the amount of variety today is almost good as it ever has been, the games are just coming from different places (and are usually digital-download-centric now, retail PC is dead in North America... I think that's a huge problem, but that's a different issue).

So yeah, I definitely think that PC gaming is a lot down from where it was in the '90s, but its inherent advantages mean that it never completely goes away, and lots of games are still coming out on the PC, mostly MMOs, European games, and console ports, yes, but that's a lot of variety there.

Oh yeah, and indie stuff, which the PC still definitely dominates. Steam has been an incredible boost to indie developers... I don't like Steam very much, but it has been very good for them, which is great.

I still don't get your Steam hatred. Of all the online stores out there, they've got the most user friendly system I've yet seen. What's your issue with them exactly?

Most friendly? Yeah, if you like Apple-style total control...

I wasn't aware that Steam only allowed you to download your game once.

ABF just gets pissy over not being able to install his games in 50 different directories across five different hard drives. I mean, really, who wants things centralized, organized, and easy to find anyway?

Steam also has achievements, big-time sales, centralized online community and friend list, loads of indie support, and non-invasive DRM.

Yeah, sorry for not having infinite space on my C partition, or being so stupid that I'd actually use Raid 0 and risk everything if one disk drive went bad... there are reasons for wanting the option of choosing where you install things to other than just "I want it there", you know! It's called "which partitions have the free space?". Guess you don't actually use your computer for much, so you don't actually use much of your hard drive?

I've got about 1TB of HDD space, but it's almost full so I'll need to look into getting more... and it's across three drives, each partitioned. (I just added it up, only 54GBs free across all partitions)

There is a workaround, fortunately, or it would be very difficult to figure out how to keep many of my Steam games installed, a little app that can add functionality in Windows that fools things into thinking a folder is in one place while it's actually in another, fortunately, but having to use such workarounds is insane. Why in the world has Valve used, and stuck with, such a terrible design?

Every other service just gives you a file to download and install normally. Valve goes the Apple route of forcing you to install it where they want, in their folder, with no options, and it's awful.


And I know I've said it before, but that's just one thing I dislike about Steam. Game organization is another one. They've improved things a lot, with the semi-customizable list options you now have, but still, it's far from ideal. Etc, there's more.

Quote:Steam also has achievements, big-time sales, centralized online community and friend list, loads of indie support, and non-invasive DRM.

Achievements: I don't care
Sales: Yes, those are nice.
Online community: Yay, so it's Valve Messenger too.
Indie support: Only because of how big it is...
DRM: Why should we be celebrating that everything on Steam has DRM on it? At least on other services some/most/all (depending on service -- GOG is DRM-free) games don't have DRM, while others do. At least it isn't the really bad kind of DRM, sure, but still, it's DRM. (Yes though, it is better than stuff like Ubisoft's always-on-connection idiocy...)

Oh yeah, and as for games, I've never finished a Valve game, so it's not like their games draw me to it either. I mean sure, the Half-Life games are very good, but I like other things more. They're very good FPSes, but FPSes aren't near the top of my list of favorite genres...

One other thing I dislike are the Steam fans, the people who say things like "if it's not on Steam I won't even buy it", etc... another reason to compare it to Apple and their fans to come up for excuses for all of Apple's bad behavior? :)

That stuff is annoying, the game is just as good on other DD services, and better retail because at least you get an actual box to look at.


Still though, Valve's not all bad... I mean, they haven't abandoned PCs for consoles, done anything as bad as Starcraft 2's crippled mapmaking and online modes yet, or done Ubisoft's always on thing either. That is definitely good, in today's "We are going to use piracy as our excuse for why we're going to ignore the PC now (or cripple the games we do release with DRM)" world... but I really wish the program was more functional and less restrictive, and Valve's fans were less annoying.

A Black Falcon Wrote:Why in the world has Valve used, and stuck with, such a terrible design?

Because the vast, vast majority of people don't think it's terrible.

Yeah, and the vast majority of people probably think that the Wii's 512MB internal memory is plenty of space, too. Doesn't make them right.

Quote:Why should we be celebrating that everything on Steam has DRM on it?

Because it's DRM that:

1. Helps developers release games on Steam without having to worry about rampant piracy.

2. Doesn't treat customers like potential criminals.

Quote:Game organization is another one.

Yeah, that's great. All my games in one spot to peruse at my own leisure and then automatically boot up without a disc. Honestly, I wish every PC game was on Steam.

Quote:and it's across three drives, each partitioned.

Aaaand there's your problem.

I really can't think of a modern reason to have multiple partitions on one drive. Drive failure doesn't tend to take out whole partitions if a small section gets corrupted these days (the drives can automatically account for that). The sort of failure that does that is the sort that will take out the magnetic head alignment entirely and thus takes out all partitions with it anyway.

That said, I do agree that allowing customized install directories wouldn't be a bad thing. There's also one other issue with Steam, which is that some games will end up with both Steam DRM and whatever DRM the game already had. Bioshock is one rather annoying example. In those cases, I just buy the disk version. (Yeah, I end up doing a lot of research before buying modern games these days. In other words, preorder "bonus content" is almost NEVER something I ever actually get, another reason I can't stand it.)

Otherwise though, it's about the most user friendly online store out there. Comparing it to Apple is pretty silly, considering that even with those issues, if you just go to the game's own directory, most of those games (aside from Valve's own) will still let you run them without the Steam client at all.

I like partitions. I got used to them back in the '90s when Windows had a 2GB per partition limit, and ever since I've been used to organizing stuff by partition -- this stuff goes on this partition, that stuff on that partition, etc. It's a nice way to break stuff up. Of course stuff spills over, so I have games installed on almost all partitions, but still, it's a good organizational tool. I use the file system for organization, after all, so stuff like that matters. :)

But GR, even if I didn't partition my drives it's not like it'd make much of a difference for Steam, unless I was (as I said) so stupid as to actually use Raid 0, which I never would.

I mean, I have 90GBs of Steam games installed, and that's without installing some games that I technically own (from bundles) but haven't played, like HL2 episodes 1 and 2, Teamfortress 2, etc. That's a very large amount, and it would be even bigger if I installed everything I could, nearly 100GBs I'd bet. Because DD stuff must install the whole game to your hard drive and storing data on a disc is not possible, installs are huge.

50GBs of that 90 has been moved and redirected with Link Shell (the app I mentioned above), so that it's on a different drive and Steam only thinks it's on drive C, where Steam is. But what if I didn't have each drive partitioned?

Well, C has 2.5GBs free and E 12GBs, so there's about 15GB. Oh wait, 15 versus 50... which half of my Steam data do I choose to delete just because Valve are idiots, in a world where I don't know about Link Shell? I guess I'd have to rearrange my whole hard drives' organization system just to find a place for it, but that's ridiculous. I should not have to design my computer organization system around their wishes, they should allow the user to do things how they wish, as EVERY OTHER PC GAME AND DD SERVICE PRETTY MUCH EVER does.

Quote:I really can't think of a modern reason to have multiple partitions on one drive. Drive failure doesn't tend to take out whole partitions if a small section gets corrupted these days (the drives can automatically account for that). The sort of failure that does that is the sort that will take out the magnetic head alignment entirely and thus takes out all partitions with it anyway.

And that's why Raid 0 is so, so dangerous -- while with a normal arrangement (different partitions on each drive, or at least one per disk) if one of your HDDs goes bad at least your partitions on other drives should still be fine, with Raid 0, because it makes all of your drives into one giant partition, with no redundancy, if one drive goes bad you lose EVERYTHING. I knew someone in college who had that happen to them. Sure it's "convenient" for some people (not for me of course, but for some people), but is it really worth the risk?

Still though, it is possible to have a kind of error that knocks out a partition but not the drive it's on...

Quote:most of those games (aside from Valve's own) will still let you run them without the Steam client at all.

That's a good point, I really need to correct those Start menu links so that they go to the games directly, not to Steam. It'd be great to not have to launch Steam every time I want to play a game that I happen to have bought in Steam, you need to wait for both Steam and then the game to launch, and that's a little annoying.

I have 135GB of Steam games and 85GB still free on my 700GB harddrive.

So if you have free hard drive space left, nobody else should care if they don't (on any one drive). Right.

No, it means you should burn all that anime to some DVDs.

But anime only takes up 210GBs of my hard drive, not too much... :D

Seriously though, that kind of excuse is stupid. Come on, just admit that they should allow you to install things where you want like any other computer program does.

I swear you two need to get a sitcom.

Anyway, RAID0 is best used for things like external terabyte drives. There are ways to recover data from a single drive in that sort of partition, but you're right, a RAID0 setup is very dangerous and should only be done in very specific circumstances, which the average home user never really runs across.

The best cheat for Steam would be to simply install Steam to whichever partition/drive you want to specially assign for Steam and only Steam. Do that and it should cover you well enough. Yes, it's been a long requested feature to allow Steam games to be installed wherever the user wants, but it'll be a while I suppose. The easy solution would just be a configuration file in the Steam directory that pointed to everything else.

There is one good reason to boot games in Steam instead of otherwise, the Steam community. If you're not really into that, just as you say.