Microsoft same-day reversal on Xbox Live Gold price doubling | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft same-day reversal on Xbox Live Gold price doubling

windowscentral.com

47 pointsTerretta63 comments

I like how the way this was officially communicated is by editing the original blog post to strike out (but not remove) the bits that are no longer applicable - makes it clear what exactly was backtracked. This should be standard practice.

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2021/01/22/update-on-xbox-live-g...

Shame they used <s> instead of <del> though, but I'm guessing they are probably just using a CMS with a WYSIWYG editor, so not that surprising.

It's WordPress.

The commentary here has some context on when to use each type of element: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16743581/what-is-the-dif...

Honestly it's such a small nitpick, but worth sharing documentation as we all improve our craft!

I still find it unbelievable how console manufacturers managed to convince people its normal to pay more money just to use their internet connection.

Indeed. I think gamers are an easy target because they've collectively very little impulse control. Every single time there were talks of boycotts nothing really happened as far as I recall.

For instance the justification for "paid online" is usually server costs, but that's forgetting that not so long ago most (non-persistent) online games let you host your own servers if you wanted to. So they moved away from that in order to gain more control and give themselves more opportunities for monetization (loot boxes etc...) and then they use that as an excuse to ask money for online. And it worked.

Meanwhile, gamers: https://pcinvasion.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/modernwarf...

I say this as a somewhat reluctantly self-identified "gamer".

Big agree on the impulse control. It's worsened by the fact that, for lots of gamers, gaming is their strongest form of escapism. But I think it also compounds with this tendenct for gaming to suffer from a lot of the same polarization that's happening in politics. It's like it gets at the same core part of your lizard brain.

Instead of Red vs Blue, it's Green vs Blue (and Nintendo stands off to the side, having fun with its family in Wii Fit, and PC is in a basement garbed in dark blue worshiping GabeN and trying to summon HL3). And people will look the other way to an excessive degree while "their" team does bad stuff.

I will say that one thing gaming has that politics doesn't is "the only thing we hate as much as the other side is our side". Obviously even microsoft fanboys will be quick to turn on Microsoft if they do something obviously anti-gamer, since gamers also love to be victims.

It's not some nefarious plot, it's just regular economics, the same kind that is motivating a trend away from on-premise software and toward SaaS. The justification was never 'server costs' but rather the costs of the services that xbox provides (text and voice chat, moderation, player profiles, friends lists, matchmaking, video capture and sharing, software update channels, etc).

Microsoft still provides an entire infrastructure for communication and multiplayer games. In any other industry, I suppose the cost of that service would be rolled into the price of the device. But since consoles are often sold for a loss, Sony and Microsoft are likely compelled to charge for whatever add-on services they can.

On PC that infrastructure exists as well, for free. For communication you can choose between things like Discord, Teamspeak or maybe just the ingame voice chat. And you don't need to pay for those Battlefield online servers. All while PC games are cheaper than the console versions.

Someone does, because you generally cant host them in the client (wrt battlefield) there's plenty of games where that's not a problem, but BF has famously made it harder and harder for private hosters so they can sell those servers.

XBox games utilize P2P communications, which means that players are actually providing much of the heavy infrastructure ("game servers") whereas Microsoft is responsible only for match-making/routing.

Microsoft has public documentation that describes how it works:

> The session host is the console or device that runs the game play simulation for titles built on a host-based peer-to-peer network architecture. This console or device is typically the same as the arbiter, but it does not have to be the same.[0]

[0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/xbox-live/features/m...

There are less and less p2p usage, most serious games have moved to dedicated servers. And your definitation of heavy is very much incacurate.

There's a distinct lack of citations in your self-assured reply. Go ahead and cite all of that.

"XBox games utilize P2P communications, which means that players are actually providing much of the heavy infrastructure ("game servers") whereas Microsoft is responsible only for match-making/routing."

Just talking about authentication / autorization do you know how much it takes in term of infra at the scale of Xbox?

At a high level overview what they provide:

- authz / authn / entitlment

- rewards

- social ( voip, group, friends, chat, profil )

- achievments

- store / marketplace

- matchmaking

- leaderboard

- object storage for entities, cloud save game

Just open: https://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-live-status

As for gameserver the definition is very broad depending on what you do on those gameservers, some of them are heavy other are light depending of what's happening server side ( physics, ai, gameplay replication etc ... )

The cost of said infrastructure is miniscule compared to the immense profits of just selling the games. Also, consoles are generally only sold at a loss at the beginning of their life cycle, becoming profitable not long after launch as component prices fall.

Also, the online services don't provide game servers, these are paid for by the game publishers.

Please don't make excuses for the anti-consumer profiteering of gigantic mega-corporations. No PC platform is 'compelled' to require payment for online play, despite many offering a similar or greater level of server to XBL or PSN.

"The cost of said infrastructure is miniscule"

This is so wrong, infra is very expensive for online games. It's that expensive that it's still a question to use dedicated server vs p2p because of cost.

I mean, sure, game dev in general is very expensive. But in the grand scheme of a game's budget, server infra is a very small part relative to the others. In addition, the per-user cost is miniscule (which is probably what I should have said, considering we're discussion companies which charge per-user for 'server infrastructure').

Obviously P2P has many advantages apart from being free for the publisher - such as lower latency.

Why is it unbelievable ? The business model involves not charging enough for the console and some big titles to lure in customers and then later capturing profit from things like DLC and peripherals. It was quite common in the history of PC gaming for the players to have to pay for their own servers for network play.

At the time when Xbox Live was started, by far most console multiplayer games had p2p architecture and only required central infrastructure for matchmaking though (and this was about the only service provided by Xbox Live). I don't know how common client/server games are nowadays where the servers are part of the Xbox Live infrastructure.

The servers aren't part of the XBox Live infrastructure, but XBox Live provides infrastructure for friends lists, matchmaking, p2p text and voice communication, moderation (banning players), video recording and sharing, etc. They also provide a website, mobile apps, and of course the console experience to interface with these services.

$5/month isn't an unreasonable price tag for these features, and I would happily pay double if it meant that xbox would actually remove some of the hardcore stalkers and overt pedophiles. By which I mean the networks of grown men who coordinate to target certain minors (even though the minors appear offline and block the stalkers) by fanning out across game servers. Microsoft knows about these players because they've been reported so many times and by so many different players that they have the worst Reputation Scores. This isn't to speak of the "ordinary" sexual harassment, trolling, cheating, and "unsporting behavior".

Is it also unbelievable to charge for access to an IP library?

Of course not, but that's not what the service is, or primarily is marketed as (you may be thinking of Xbox Game Pass?)

I'll admit I pay it just to hang onto my ancient 3 letter gamertag.

I feel the same way about people who pay for cable only to see commercials on all of the shows

They're not paying to use their Internet connection, they're paying to use the XBox Live infrastructure, just like any SaaS business.

Or maybe it is an ongoing mistake that HTTP 402 is left as it is. “Everything on Internet should be free(-beer)” is such a load of BS.

I think it’s incredible that ad supported games are a thing - you are going to support your game by showing ads for someone else’s game? If the ads are effective and people go play that game, then they are not watching ads during your game anymore. Didn’t think that one through.

This is rather off topic, but I hate how these sites have all links be internal. There's text saying "Microsoft announced X last week" and it's a link, but when I click it I don't go to the announcement, I go to their article about the announcement.

It frustrates me to no end that I can't easily reach the original material because the site wants to keep me engaged.

I had unsubscribed from Live/GamePass last year, I understand how it's perceived as good value for those who are really into multiplayer games and wanting to have large game library.

But what I don't understand is how 'overchoice'[1] hasn't affected Xbox GamePass adversely yet; even though hundreds, thousands of games are available for download we're limited by the time we can put into gaming and storage to download those games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice

I believe that claims of video game over choice and video game saturation are largely a myth. The reality of the situation is that players are faced with a large library of just okay games and few titles that actually check off all the boxes and are really tailor made for the individual player. AVGN is a good example of how players slog through mediocre to bad games because of the large chasm between what you have and what you actually want.

Also, most commercial games are "high maintenance" now. They take a long time to start, a long time to go through menus and options, and in many cases the "significant" gameplay is interleaved with dialogue, cut-scenes, tutorial, grind, fedex quests, etc... which is opposed to the old-school or indie experience of jumping into play and being challenged pretty fast.

... So going through all those motions is OK for great games... but unbearable for those not up to par. I could spend some time playing a not-so-great indie plataformer, but open world action rpgs and the like must be top notch or they're painful to play.

doubling? wow. they really got greedy there for a second.

No they really want to kill XLG and make Game Pass the only source of games, first on XBOX and then the world.

That way players have zero input in what games get made but well-connected companies (like one from Montreal famous for bad games and bad behavior) will get your money no matter what you do.

The Game Pass model really worries me. It's a definite chilling effect to game studios and traditional publishing, not to mention indies.

Feels like the subscription model is an answer for popular games being free, which itself make a bank on the 1% who spend an enormous amount of money on in-game items. Seems like everyone wants to be Valve in a way or another, owning a platform while making a bank on transaction cuts rather than the content itself. I wonder how much of a conscious decision this was on Valve's part when they made DotA 2 free. At the time it seemed more like a user-grab from LoL and Garena private-servers, and the in-game items were more like an afterthought that came from modding tools.

Why do you say that? I am a Game Pass subscriber and find myself playing _many_ more indie games with it than before. It's easier for me to pay for the service and effectively amortize the cost of paying for indie games which is, at least how I would put it, inherently risky.

Before I would pay $5, $10, or $20 for games with a chance I'll like them - some are worth way more, some worth way less. With Game Pass I have a 'sunk cost' so I download and try out games much more eagerly and find myself enjoying many more indie games than before.

I have seen an interview where an indie dev said that Microsoft covered their entire development cost for a game to get it on Game Pass, leaving their sales on other platforms to be 'pure profit' in a sense.

I am not having a great time with the 'traditional publishing' model of the industry right now. If it gets shaken up, that seems like a benefit to me, not a drawback.

Before, the indie dev got that entire $5, $10, $20 (minus the stores percentage), while now they get whatever percentage you played out of whatever percentage of the game pass fees are paid to the gAsk me what working on Manhunt 2 was like some time.ame developers. Maybe that ends up more than before, especially if you play a game a lot and more than just during one month, but its not clear to me that this is the case, especially if you split your time between many games.

It seems like this model is better for the consumer (pay one fee, play whatever and however much you like), but whether or not its better for the game developers, I don't know.

I think the point is the OP and people like myself wouldn’t be buying the Indy games at all.

But those same indies get more people playing their game with a subscription like game pass. This is all just speculation, though. We need an indie dev to tell us how game pass has affected their company—positively or negatively.

Indeed. I’d love to see some real statistics from a variety of indie devs.

Bah too late to edit the accidentally pasted text in my message :(

how is this better than the steam model? pay for games you want, get a refund if you don't like them.

I'm not so sure it's chilling. Many indie folks actually feel like they get more reliable income from gamepass or epic exclusivity than they do on steam for example.

Game pass is like Netflix for games. Netflix doesn't just steam their own productions.

Not necessarily, most games on Game Pass are on a Spotify-like business model: your subscription is split between the games you played that month. Some releases (mostly day-one additions) just get one lump of cash but so far a lot of those were based on demand and which games people were waiting for.

If that was the Spotify model the people would be a lot happier with Spotify.

The Spotify model is that people who listen to Beyonce on repeat are subsidized by the person who listens to 1h of indie bands a month.

Fair, I guess I used the wrong example but that's how Game Pass is (was?) done, at least. Given the size of the catalog I'm sure most are still this way:

> Others want [agreements] more based on usage and monetization in whether it’s a store monetization that gets created through transactions, or usage. We’re open [to] experimenting with many different partners, because we don’t think we have it figured out. When we started, we had a model that was all based on usage. Most of the partners said, “Yeah, yeah, we understand that, but we don’t believe it, so just give us the money upfront.”

https://www.theverge.com/21611412/microsoft-phil-spencer-int...

Ubisoft is actually from Montreuil, in France.

>Ubisoft is actually from Montreuil, in France.

This is unnecessary pedantry.

https://montreal.ubisoft.com/en/

Well, they have an office in Montreal, no more no less.

Glad to see this. I’ve always felt so dirty paying an annual fee just to play Halo online once or twice a year - particularly when the online experience isn’t exactly worth paying for.

Since we’re talking about Xbox and cost here I have a question for the HN crowd.

I’m always amazed that a $500 console can run games better than a $1500 PC. I know these consoles are sold at a loss, but how much? What are the components worth?

Also would a console be any good as a PC if you could get a common OS running on it?

They generally can't, as cyberpunk showed. More often than not the console version has lower quality graphics than their PC counterpart is capable of.

There is no PS5/ Xbox One X version of cyberpunk. One will launch end of 2021. Cyberpunk is a bad example.

> I’m always amazed that a $500 console can run games better than a $1500 PC.

I cannot think of an instance where that statement is true. Perhaps you meant $500 console can perform moderately well compared to a $1500 PC? If a game runs better on a console then its PC counterpart, then it usually the developer not optimizing the game properly.

> Also would a console be any good as a PC if you could get a common OS running on it?

PS2 OS was based on Linux. It was not impossible to get a Linux disto running. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2?wprov=...

> I’m always amazed that a $500 console can run games better than a $1500 PC.

It'd be amazing if true (because it doesn't make sense), but it's not. "[The PS5] is about equivalent to a mid to high end gaming PC from five years ago" [1]

[1] https://youtu.be/HCvE4JGJujk?t=1953

There's no question a new gaming pc equivalent to a ps5 will be much more expensive than a ps5.

Not really. See this for details: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/12/ps5-xbox-series-x-cost-of-...

Not the section for what you get for the same price, the section for what you’d have to spend to match the specs and performance including 120fps at 4K, ray tracing, and streaming texture loads from nvme and so on.

Article from Nov 2020: “This Is How Much It Would Cost You To Build A PC To Rival The PS5, Xbox Series X”

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/12/ps5-xbox-series-x-cost-of-...

TL;DR: author finds the parts to build a comparable performance PC in Australian dollars would be $2600 AUD versus $750 AUD for the console.

Not really true, one is that games are more optimised for the specific hardware but generally pc game versions are almost always superior than console counterparts

Thats because consoles are software locked out of mining cryptocurrency and ML. GPU equalling PS5 performance is somewhere between 2070 Super and 2080TI, $1-2K right there. Microsoft and Sony make additional money on game licenses so cheap hardware is in their best interest.

Just imagine what would happen if someone managed to publish a TensorFlow "game" allowing you to use current gen consoles in distributed machine learning workloads.

I dislike how "reversal" has a negative connotation (to me as well). Reversals of bad decisions should be applauded, not ridiculed as if doubling down on a bad decision is somehow more noble.

Bravo to Microsoft for rolling this back.

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