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Comment by eswat | Hacker News Reader

> Do gamers hate subscriptions?

Pretty much. You still get gamers that riff on the subscription costs of MMOs, services like Xbox LIVE or PlayStation Plus, etc. and most-recently Call of Duty Elite—where I’m betting it’s subscription model and the general distaste for it is talked about more than the actual benefits and features of the service.

With the kind of hate console/PC games and services get, where you arguably get a richer experience compared to web-based games, I’m not really surprised that web-based games tend to err on the side of caution for generating revenue.

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I'm not so sure if this is true. I think the vocal minority dislikes subscriptions but there are millions and millions of WoW or XBOX Live players who don't seem to mind. And I'm sure, in the end, there will be plenty of people paying for CoD Elite as well.

Call of Duty Elite—not yet available—is an additional service on-top of the Call of Duty games. So yeah, all the haters right now are just upset that they can’t use this service for free.

I’m not necessarily saying that gamers hate the subscription model enough to not buy a product solely because of it. But it’s enough of a touchy subject on console/PC that I believe a web-based game would have to work much harder to convince the typical gamer to pay monthly for it. If given the choice between a subscription model (WoW), freemium (Global Agenda) or microtransactions (TF2), I think gamers would greatly favour freemium or microtransations over subscriptions.

That's interesting. In the CoD:Elite example, do you know if the "haters" were folks who paid and were disappointed, or were generally upset about not being able to play for free? Do you think that deterred others from paying?

I think it should be either $60 upfront or a monthly subscription fee.

I never tried WoW because it pissed me off that you paid $60 for a game you essentially couldn't play.

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