Even with all the alternatives on the market, no one can look Microsoft straight in the eye and claim that there's a service more complete or polished than Xbox LIVE. And their arcade titles are complimenting the service, not just through spec-sheet pleasing "leaderboards," but massive amounts of co-op injected into new and old titles alike. I have huge hopes for Home and the few PSN titles out there are fantastic, but LIVE tips the scales of me buying/playing a game on the 360 instead of the PS3...daily. As for Nintendo, their infrastructure is the equivalent of a 1991 AOL member homepage with animated mailbox gifs and site counters. It's shamefully outdated, and not in the ironic way.
A new post (hxxp://kotaku.com/339165/calling-it-the-xbox-360-won-2007) on the popular gaming news blog Kotaku declares that they find Xbox Live the winner for online gaming in 2007. In their analysis, they compare Microsoft's online service to that of Nintendo and Sony, but is this examination complete and conclusive? What gives this man the right to compare the content level of a 4 gig DVD inside their large piece of electronics to the tiny hand held Nintendo DS?
There is an obvious reason the DS won in sales this year; its portable, its suitable for all ages, and its cheap. For the price of a 360 game, one can almost buy two DS games, and the cartridge for these is probably a 10th of the size! how could any one expect the same level of content in a portable game next to a DVD in a console?
And what gives this guy the right so say that Live has the best online gaming service available? he compared it to the two other consoles; the wii and the ps3. But the Wii was designed to be played with friends in the same room, and the online service was created with little 8 year old kids online. What parent could submit their child to a game with voice chat with drunk college kids or worse: those evil 12 year olds who are so ruthless on Live. And the PS3, well no one has a PS3 so what are you going to do. He missed a crucial opponent though, acting like he doesn't exist; PC gaming.
PC gaming has made steps beyond Live that pre-teen fan boys can only begin to imagine, yet it is so much more simple. On xbox live, you select an option that you want to play a game. From there the service searches out other people who just pressed the same button and throws you all together in a tiny room. This brilliant scheme sets you back about $50 a year. Now who's tiny room is it? why, which ever one of those kids who happens to have the lowest latency, of course! just throw all the hosting onto a system that is already running the game and we'll have cool runnings from here on out. in PC gaming, a group of people come together, chip in some money (and i've looked at it, if you get a small handful or so of people it can be $50 or less per year easy) and create their own server. On this server, they can pick their own rules and map rotations and game types. They can ban cheaters or "hax0rz" with a simple command. What has live got to stop these hax0rs? well, you can report them, and they'll probably have their account suspended for a while. but what happens if a couple people report some innocent young chap who just pwnd their asses of the face of the earth? well, they'll probably have their account suspended for a while. Now that kid can't play, where-as on the server system, he just goes and jumps on a new one of hundreds.
Another clear difference in online pc gaming and live is the competency of the players. server admins do have more power than a normal person on live, so their is some kind of law present. our little johnny the 1337 12 year old decides that he's going to start busting heads on voice chat, well consider little johnny banned. from there he can go find a server full of other little 1337 12 year olds and they can all yell obscenities on their microphones together. But for every other server in the list, you'll find these kids completely absent. There is a level of respect there that you just can't buy from Microsoft.
Let's talk about Microsoft's acclaimed content download packs. Gamers eventually get tired of playing the same few maps over and over again, so when the fan base for a certain game begins to shrink, Microsoft can release a content download pack to update the maps and game types, for a price. Pay and extra 5 or 10 dollars, and you get 4 or 5 new maps, maybe a new game type, and continue to play their product for another year or so, until they release the next content pack in the form of Game 2, for another full $60. Now how does PC gaming keep it's gamers happy? Users can create their own maps and mods and release them, for free, on the internet. What?! Computer games release more content at a quicker pace, for free, from better servers, with less in-game lag, for a game that initially cost less money, but somehow looks better?! just a thought...
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