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Comment by CoopaTroopa | Hacker News Reader

Please do not give them that idea. I still haven't gotten over Sony charging $60 a year to give you the privilege to play online with your friends.

Soon it'll cost $150/yr to play a modern console like you should be able to

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I still can't believe this practice was normalized, why would anyone be ok with paying Sony/MS to use their own internet connection they already pay for? It's not like an MMO sub where you're paying for server maintenance or something, most of these games are p2p or running on the publisher's servers. Console gamers will put up with anything apparently (maybe because their parents are paying for it)

> It's not like an MMO sub where you're paying for server maintenance or something

Those matchmaking and auth services and what not are absolutely being hosted and managed by the console's online networks.

Maybe the actual match gets hosted p2p, but the overall matchmaking, NAT punching, etc is all being provided by game platform.

True but those costs should be more than covered by the cut they get from psn/xbox store purchases. Steam manages to provide those services without charging their users for it. Come to think of it i bet the bandwidth needed to download games from the psn store (typically 30-100+gb a piece) is probably more costly than any of the multiplayer services they lock behind a subscription

Steam's matchmaking services are far more limited than Xbox's.

Also, very few Steam games are sold outside of Steam. How many Xbox games are sold by other vendors like Walmart/Target/Bestbuy/Amazon/GameStop?

Agreed. Console online services provide no value whatsoever, it is pure "pay me because fuck you". It blows my mind that people were willing to pay for Xbox Live Gold back in the day. Though of course once Xbox proved people were willing to pay for what should be free, it was only a matter of time until everyone copied Microsoft.

It's $80/yr currently.

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