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Comment by vultour | Hacker News Reader

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

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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".

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).

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.

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

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

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

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?)

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