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Sony should release online multiplayer from PS plus and make it free

MonarchJT

Banned
Uhm Ms is building, with gamepass, a user base that is not forced to pay to access multiplayer so I suppose they have a target on the number of users they want to reach before deleting the Live Gold. On the contrary, Sony does not have a service that can make up for the lack of ps + and we know that most users pay because they are forced by the need to be able to access multiplayer ... so I do not think it is in a position to be able to make it free unless they want to give up a huge amount of money.
 

yurinka

Member

Sony should release online multiplayer from PS plus and make it free​

I figure if they made online free, most people would drop PS+. It's the main reason most people bother with it in the first place.
I have no idea of the server costs for online MP, but must be huge. We also have to consider that in addition to this they have to pay server costs of the matches but also the matchmaking, lobbies, friend invites, any type of chat, shareplay, sending screenshots and videos to social networks, achievements, cloud saves and so on. Specially since we're talking about a scale of over 100M MAU this is a shit ton of money. Someone has to pay it. To make the payment more appealing they also bundled some games there.

A few years ago they did a survey where the results were public after voting. As I remember the top reason, with over 40% of the votes to keep subscribed was the monthly games. MP was as I remember the 2nd with around 20% or so. I think the subs would drop, but not much specially now that the games included there are (supposed) going to be more appealing. Think also that many players don't play online multiplayer.

I think the new PS+ will highly increase their subs and specially the ARPU, so I assume it will highly increase its revenue and who knows if profitability too. If it ends being so profitable, and Discord is the one handling and paying the costs of text, audio and video chat they could consider to make online MP free. But still, I'm not sure.

I suggest you to call Sony and tell them you'll pay them several millions per month to cover the costs of making the MP free for the rest of the players who knows, you may get lucky and they may accept. Oh, and please do the same to make PS5 hardware free to the rest of the players, pay Sony all the costs of manufacturing, disributing and marketing it and they may distribute it for free.
 
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DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Uhm Ms is building, with gamepass, a user base that is not forced to pay to access multiplayer so I suppose they have a target on the number of users they want to reach before deleting the Live Gold. On the contrary, Sony does not have a service that can make up for the lack of ps + and we know that most users pay because they are forced by the need to be able to access multiplayer ... so I do not think it is in a position to be able to make it free unless they want to give up a huge amount of money.
It's in the cost of the sub. Just like PSNow subs didn't have to "pay for multiplayer" either.
 
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RCU005

Member
TLDR; It's fucking bullshit to keep online multiplayer behind a paywall.
It’s the same fucking bullshit like airlines charging you for luggage; but it’s the same purpose, to milk every consumer for their last penny.

Also, maybe that’s why Sony’s most successful games are single player cinematic experiences?
 
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Mr Hyde

Member
I suggest you to call Sony and tell them you'll pay them several millions per month to cover the costs of making the MP free for the rest of the players who knows, you may get lucky and they may accept. Oh, and please do the same to make PS5 hardware free to the rest of the players, pay Sony all the costs of manufacturing, disributing and marketing it and they may distribute it for free.

What's with the cunty attitude?
 

Merkades

Member
This makes no sense to me, why would people want it if not for that? I say this as someone who has had PS+ almost since launch, and I have not played even one second of MP. There can't be too many people like me. Incidentally, I got it for cloud saves, after my OG PS3 had the YLOD and I lost all my saves. I am way too lazy to try to manually backup saves.
 

MonarchJT

Banned
It's in the cost of the sub. Just like PSNow subs didn't have to "pay for multiplayer" either.
psnow is like gamepass but unfortunately for Sony it was a complete failure. If I made multiplayer free, the vast majority of ps + users would stop paying and Sony would be left with what in hand?
 

mckmas8808

Banned
With Sony introducing new tiers to their PS plus subscription service, they should release online multiplayer from the paywall and make it free. It shouldn't be an exclusive feature or perk when subbing to PS plus, it should be available for everyone free of charge.

Now that Sony introduces new tiers, they have multiple compelling options for people paying for PS plus, in the form of cloud saving, streaming, game downloads, exclusive discounts and deals, demos and free games every month. People will pay for this and be happy. A majority of their fan base will still be subbed. But me, who only want to play some co-op multiplayer in Elden Ring/Souls or make a couple of runs in Returnal, it fucking sucks I need to shell out a lot of money every year for a service I barely use.

TLDR; It's fucking bullshit to keep online multiplayer behind a paywall.

That 70S Show Reaction GIF by Laff
 

sainraja

Member
Exactly! It's conveniently forgotten now that MS started all this and putting F2P and other free services behind a paywall.
Xbox users used to boast how great the online service was. I don't mind paying as long as Sony keep on improving the online experience. The gap between PS3 online and PS4 is huge.
Yup. With MS, you use to have to pay to play F2P games and let's not forget you also needed XBL Gold to watch Netflix on your Xbox. Good thing they don't do that anymore but it definitely took them a while to stop doing it.
 
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Three

Member
no pls explain what did you mean
He means when you pay $180 for gamepass the cost of the online multiplayer is in the GP sub. Just as if you were to get PS+ extra or PS+ Premium for $100 you don't need to pay for multiplayer.

They are one and the same. So when you say

"With gamepass MS are building a user base that is not forced to pay to access multiplayer"

It's plain bullshit.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
no pls explain what did you mean
This isn't a console war dick measure.

Xbox has Live/Gold, Sony has Plus
Sony did not charge for a separate multiplayer fee in the Now sub, because it was already factored in (minus Plus games)
MS doesn't charge in Game Pass, because it is already factored in (minus Gold games)
Sony is streamlining Now into Plus so it's 3 tiers, multiplayer already factored in all 3
MS too technically has the same 3 tiers as well, outside of Live/Gold being the outlier in naming convention only

Neither one of them is giving up the economical baseline multiplayer (with monthly games), since traditionally and historically rental/streaming like services (the more expensive tiers) go up in price over time to keep up with rising costs of securing content, and lesser software sales. The economical multiplayer entry will always be there unless one of them becomes a publisher only, and no longer has its own walled garden.
 
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Why? Cause you want to save money?

People shit on sony all ps3 gen for their shit online and cried all about how xbox had the best experience cause it was paid for.

Thanks everyone.

Pay!
I never got that. PS3 wasn't that bad. It worked fine enough. A system wide chat party option would have been nice, but it's not as if it was equivalent to Nintendo or anything.

But, it didn't matter. Being free while Xbox was paid really made little difference. There's no reason they would ever go back.
 

MonarchJT

Banned
This isn't a console war dick measure.

Xbox has Live/Gold, Sony has Plus
Sony did not charge for a separate multiplayer fee in the Now sub, because it was already factored in (minus Plus games)
MS doesn't charge in Game Pass, because it is already factored in (minus Gold games)
Sony is streamlining Now into Plus so it's 3 tiers, multiplayer already factored in all 3
MS too technically has the same 3 tiers as well, outside of Live/Gold being the outlier in naming convention only

Neither one of them is giving up the economical baseline multiplayer (with monthly games), since traditionally and historically rental/streaming like services (the more expensive tiers) go up in price over time to keep up with rising costs of securing content, and lesser software sales. The economical multiplayer entry will always be there unless one of them becomes a publisher only, and no longer has its own walled garden.
why you pulling me in your console war because you feel to defend your console of choice?? I'm just explaining that Sony and Ms they are today in a very different position from each other

no one would pay for live gold (6.99) or ps+ essential (6.99) if multiplayer was free
But Ms would still have those 25m subs of gamepass...the worst thing that could happen is that all gamepass users give up on Ultimate (losing PC and xcloud games) and returned to the basic tier because multiplayer would be free , but that does not change the gamepass subscribers are there for the GamePass not for the multiplayer because otherwise they would buy the much cheaper Live Gold.. Another matter is ps + ... we know well that psnow only had almost 3 million subs after years and years....ps+ extra is basically multiplayer + psnow so don't get upset if I say that if you made PS + multiplayer free, you would lose the vast majority of users.
 
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MonarchJT

Banned
He means when you pay $180 for gamepass the cost of the online multiplayer is in the GP sub. Just as if you were to get PS+ extra or PS+ Premium for $100 you don't need to pay for multiplayer.

They are one and the same. So when you say

"With gamepass MS are building a user base that is not forced to pay to access multiplayer"

It's plain bullshit.
I'm not talking about ultimate read my other post
 

Hari Seldon

Member
If PS wants to capture a large multiplayer audience that is comparable to PC then it absolutely has to. If it just wants a steady stream of cash based on the existing consumer base, then leave it be. It is another business decision between growth or profits.

Edit: Fuck I said the same thing earlier in this thread lol.
 
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DeepEnigma

Gold Member
why you pulling me in your console war because you feel to defend your console of choice?? I'm just explaining that Sony and Ms they are today in a very different position from each other

no one would pay for live gold (6.99) or ps+ essential (6.99) if multiplayer was free
But Ms would still have those 25m subs of gamepass...the worst thing that could happen is that all gamepass users give up on Ultimate (losing PC and xcloud games) and returned to the basic tier because multiplayer would be free , but that does not change the gamepass subscribers are there for the GamePass not for the multiplayer. Another matter is ps + ... we know well that psnow only had almost 3 million subs after years and years....ps+ extra is basically multiplayer + psnow so don't get upset if I say that if you made PS + multiplayer free, you would lose the vast majority of users.
Come On Reaction GIF by NBA

You’re talking about “what if” scenarios. I’m talking about reality.
 
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SkylineRKR

Member
Free online was ps3’s most important part.
I liked it.

PS3 was a shitty system for a lot of reasons, but what I liked was that buying the system was a done deal. I chucked an aftermarket SATA in it, and played online for 6 years. Never was forced to buy a sub just to do it, and never had to buy licensed trash for storage down the line either. Used it until I bought a PS4.

It might be shitty in retrospect, but the most fun I had online up until now were nights of Battlefield BC2 and the such with friends on PSN.
 
Not gonna happen, not even ms are stupid enough do it. If ur gona blame anyone, it should be ms, they are the ones who came up with the paid online garbage.
 
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I liked it.

PS3 was a shitty system for a lot of reasons, but what I liked was that buying the system was a done deal. I chucked an aftermarket SATA in it, and played online for 6 years. Never was forced to buy a sub just to do it, and never had to buy licensed trash for storage down the line either. Used it until I bought a PS4.

It might be shitty in retrospect, but the most fun I had online up until now were nights of Battlefield BC2 and the such with friends on PSN.

The PS3 wasn't shitty at all.

The only shitty thing about it was the lack of HW managed caches on the CPU and the trouble that made for devs at the beginning (but once the middleware became advanced enough even that was a none issue), and the GPU's lack of unified shader architecture which was the fault of NVidia withholding their latest tech from Sony at the time (and even that was invisible to the end user).
 
it is what it is
It's not though. Right now people see Gold as mandatory because they "need" online functionality. So, GamePass isn't $120 to them, it's a $60 upgrade.

If you make online free, there will people who would otherwise upgrade to GP, that would instead just take the free option.

We can debate how many people that it is, but it's significant enough that MS isn't going to go free online, despite really only caring about total GP numbers now.
 

Azurro

Banned
With Sony introducing new tiers to their PS plus subscription service, they should release online multiplayer from the paywall and make it free. It shouldn't be an exclusive feature or perk when subbing to PS plus, it should be available for everyone free of charge.

Now that Sony introduces new tiers, they have multiple compelling options for people paying for PS plus, in the form of cloud saving, streaming, game downloads, exclusive discounts and deals, demos and free games every month. People will pay for this and be happy. A majority of their fan base will still be subbed. But me, who only want to play some co-op multiplayer in Elden Ring/Souls or make a couple of runs in Returnal, it fucking sucks I need to shell out a lot of money every year for a service I barely use.

TLDR; It's fucking bullshit to keep online multiplayer behind a paywall.

Are you seriously suggesting this as a possibility? What are you going to ask Santa Claus for this year?
 

John Wick

Member
psnow is like gamepass but unfortunately for Sony it was a complete failure. If I made multiplayer free, the vast majority of ps + users would stop paying and Sony would be left with what in hand?
PSNow when launched was nothing like GP. It only had streaming options. Downloads was added after. Stop calling PSNow a failure because Sony hardly spent anything on it.
How many people do you think would subscribe to Xcloud without GP or multiplayer eh? Your doing your usual Xgoon moving the goal posts shit. Try comparing like for like and not trying to be clever.
 

anothertech

Member
On the contrary, they should start charging an additional fee per hour of use. The plus membership should only cover the ability to access online. They're losing billions by not charging us for use time.

Oh, and amount of power used by the console. Maybe an amperage wheel should be designed in the consoles so they can charge an electrical fee.

Also, a premium should be charged for number of online matches won. Dopamine shouldnt be free.

MS should get on this asap so the rest of the console maker fuckers can follow suit.
 

Chronicle

Member
I never got that. PS3 wasn't that bad. It worked fine enough. A system wide chat party option would have been nice, but it's not as if it was equivalent to Nintendo or anything.

But, it didn't matter. Being free while Xbox was paid really made little difference. There's no reason they would ever go back.
I never had a problem with it as well. Once again party chat would have been a bonus but it ran great for me. No problems. I completely agree.
 

Chronicle

Member
How's that not a fair reason?

At least, at the VERY LEAST, make it free if you only use it like 3 hours a month.
Perhaps it's fair, but selfish. It's Sonys biggest cash cow and Microsoft paved the road for them. Everyone knows paid for online is what's selling the service not shit tier 'free' games.

It doesn't make sense to even ask because you're asking a company to throw away millions in basically free money. And they know, as well as I, and you, that would be the end of your ps subscription.
 

Godot25

Banned
Too bad people saw it as a disadvantage. To this day people still praise the 360 live gold as if it was something truly special, I don't get it. All I care about are the game servers and I could never tell the difference be it on PC, Xbox or PlayStation.
That's maybe because PS3 online infrastructure was pathetic compared to X360. And I'm not saying that it was okay for Microsoft to charge for online, but you had reliable and great service vs. pathetic PS3 online experience.
But Sony got their shit together and PS4 had great online infrastructure, so they got away with charging customers.

Also a prediction.
Microsoft will drop Gold paywall way sooner then Sony their Plus paywall...
 

ParaSeoul

Member
That's maybe because PS3 online infrastructure was pathetic compared to X360. And I'm not saying that it was okay for Microsoft to charge for online, but you had reliable and great service vs. pathetic PS3 online experience.
But Sony got their shit together and PS4 had great online infrastructure, so they got away with charging customers.

Also a prediction.
Microsoft will drop Gold paywall way sooner then Sony their Plus paywall...
Never used online that much on PS3 myself but people I know who did,didn't have a lot of complaints with the actual online multiplayer.
 
That's maybe because PS3 online infrastructure was pathetic compared to X360. And I'm not saying that it was okay for Microsoft to charge for online, but you had reliable and great service vs. pathetic PS3 online experience.
But Sony got their shit together and PS4 had great online infrastructure, so they got away with charging customers.

Also a prediction.
Microsoft will drop Gold paywall way sooner then Sony their Plus paywall...
Is Live reliable now 20 years later? They just had an outage that lasted almoust an entire day.

It's not like as if Sony wasn't going to get hacked in 2011 if they were charging for online back then.

Good luck for MS if they drop the paywall, it will probably have a big negative impact for Gamepass due to it being one of the main reasons people go for the Ultimate tier.

People were saying MS wanted to make Gold free last year and MS tried to raise the price instead.
 
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emmerrei

Member
For how much i turn on my ps4 now and in the past, i would be happy if they had like 4 hours free every month, or 1 hour at week (And it's already too much). Why i have to pay a full subscription when i don't need it? To stop people creating multiple accounts just put as required a document or a phone number, or something like that.
 
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