Xbox Live Needs MMOG Overhaul

GamesIndustry.biz has a discussion with Arena.net cofounder Jeff Strain. During the course of the interview, Strain states that he considers Xbox Live imperfect for MMOG titles. From the article: "Their whole goal is to encourage people to go and buy games on the shelf, then there's an online component for it ... But for us, when you buy it on the shelf, that's just the beginning of our relationship with you - and we want a direct connection with our customer so that we're always giving you new content, always supporting you directly. Xbox Live just wasn't really built, from a business standpoint, to support that." Relatedly, Guild Wars' World Championships were recently held. eToyChest has a few words on the Korean dominance of the event.

Re:AKA

[Saige]

Xbox Live does not require people to pay to use the service - only if they want to play multiplayer games through the service.

This does NOT apply to MMOGs. You do not have to pay for a Gold-level account to play such games when they become available.

Re:AKA

[Fred Or Alive]

Considering you're constantly being accussed of being a pro-Xbox troll / advocate / whatever, I'm surpised you didn't go for the more obvious route, that you don't actually have to be subscribed to Xbox Live Gold for MMORPGs on the Xbox 360, you can subscribe to them using the Silver account. So for MMOs, it's no different to a PC really.

Re:AKA

[dyslexicbunny]

Guild Wars charges no monthly fee. Therefore, you just pay for the game and that's it. Currently, the game is $40 and it's expansion is $50. But since you aren't chunking $15 a month, you should theorectically have that money if you so desire.

Re:AKA

[XenoRyet]

Guild Wars isn't really a propper MMO, since all the gaming occures in limited player instances. To really be an MMO all the players have to be in the same worlds, at least most of the time.

Re:AKA

[nickyj]

The parent is correct. Though the other posters are correct also. You pay for Gold to play multiplayer games online. Well why should you have to pay more for MMORPGs if you have the Gold account? You are already paying to play multiplayer, but now you are classing MMORPGs in a different category from MMOs. For Silver pass you are correct though.

The problem is Gold pass cost X dollars, and the MMO costs Y, on a monthly basis. Consumers don't want to pay X + Y. Microsoft doesn't want to pay Y to the game co f

Re:AKA

[nickyj]

Correction to my post:

"You are already paying to play multiplayer, but now you are classing MMORPGs in a different category from other multiplayer games."

Re:AKA

[wolrahnaes]

Well the issue is that MMOs cost money to run. The way I understand the Live architecture is that for all games that are on Live proper, Microsoft hosts everything needed on their servers. MMOs are hosted seperately by the MMO developer for obvious reasons, and only access the Live servers for authentication. In this way, they are almost entirely independent from Live and thus use their own pricing structure.

Taking the fees out of the gold pass costs doesn't work, because it would eventually lead to a si

Re:AKA

[elrous0]

You pay for Gold to play multiplayer games online. Well why should you have to pay more for MMORPGs if you have the Gold account?

Because MMORPG's require a LOT more bandwidth, server muscle, and ongoing development costs than standard multiplayer fare.

As it stands with most multiplayer games on Live, the MS system basically just sets the game up and then hands it off to the players (with one high-bandwidth player functioning serving the game). With MMORPG's, the game company's servers are serving the game

Not Arena.net

[Blaaguuu]

Actualy Arena.net's only game to date, Guild Wars, requires only taht you buy the initial game, then you can play it online forever, with no aditional costs. They continue to support the game with very frequent patches, and there has been a little bit of new content, i believe. They are going to be releasing numerous optional "mission packs", with massive ammounts of new content, to continue getting money from consumers.

I notice they don't mention MMORPG....

[ShyGuy91284]

MMORPG (which is the very large bulk of MMOG out there) isn't mentioned in the summary or the article (by what I skimmed). I wonder if this is to deter comments about "howabout an RPG in the first place?".

Re:Yet another reason to wait for PS3 or NR

[WillAffleckUW]

sorry, second cousin. check out Gil Luna for a closer relative of mine who's in SAG and AFTRA, he's got a film coming out soon.

I know it's an uncommon name, but it's more common than you might think.

Re:Yet another reason to wait for PS3 or NR

[Kingrames]

Sony? build MMO support into the PS3?

YA THINK?

Re:Yet another reason to wait for PS3 or NR

[apoc06]

yeah, they botched the push with the ps2 harddrive. sony obviously would want to push everquest on their new box if only to keep people from leaving the service like they are doing on pc.

Re:Game world events?

[keldog42]

Of course maybe he wants more contol to sell some in-game ads and M$ is reluctant since they may not make any additional money from the ads, but I would have figured that they have been planning on profitting from ad sales since the concept was concieved.

Yeah, that will really benifit the gamers.

Re:Yeah, PlayOnline sucks, and - wait, what?

[MHQ13]

I believe that what he's complaining about is that unless you (the developer) implement your own infrastructure like PayOnline, err PlayOnline, then you can't implement MMOGs on the XBox 360 due to (perceived) limitations of XBox Live.

Personally I don't really care. I'm not a big MMO(RPG) fan. Give me my offline, single player Oblivion and I'll be happy. Much better IMO since I don't have to deal with thousands upon thousands of griefers and idiots, plus I get to play, and stop playing, when I want to wi

Re:Yeah, PlayOnline sucks, and - wait, what?

[gabebear]

I believe what the article was "bitching about" is that Microsoft interferes with online play to extort money. XBox Live Silver is really cool and useful.. while Gold is just a relic of the original flawed Live System. If MS did away with Gold and allowed games to offer free online play or pay to play then everyone would be better off.

Most games should be free to play online, but Live makes them pay-to-play, while a few games(MMOGs) should be pay-to-play at much higher levels than can be justified at a

Re:Yeah, PlayOnline sucks, and - wait, what?

[fondue]

They're complaining that Microsoft impose unworkable technical and contractual limitations on third party developers who want to bring MMOGs to the Xbox/Xbox360. Which is absolutely correct.

How does FFXI running on PlayOnline 'prove' that you can run an MMORPG through Xbox Live, exactly?

Correct me if I'm wrong but...

[jshackles]

I thought this was why Microsoft allows people to play MMOGs with just a "Silver" level subscription to Live on the XBox 360. Well, that, and they want you to pay for the MMOG on top of your normal "Gold" level subscription.

Couldn't Resist

[krgallagher]

From the summary:

"the Korean dominance of the event"

In Korea only old people play MMOGs.

You, sir, are a banana

[voice_of_all_reason]

and we want a direct connection with our customer so that we're always giving you new content, always supporting you directly.

Until the service is no longer profitable, in which case our "connection" with you gets upgraded to level "fuck you."

Conflict of business model

[Paran]

Xbox live charges a fee. Arena.net does not, and focuses on providing new content to generate income. Xbox is also designed to play a game on a disc, Arena.net's Guild Wars has contantly updated content, ie. the new content from Factions is already located on most people who play GW's hard drive. It just needs to be unlocked by purchasing a key when it's released. The store bought disc model is rapidly fading in the MMOG world. Xbox thrives on this "old" model, and is designed with it in mind.

Microsoft's cost model screws MMOG subscribers.

[Kaldaien]

Microsoft has had a nasty habit in the original XBOX Live service of charging its customers no less than $5.00 for the most trivial of content updates. Though to be honest, I don't know why an MMORPG would want to use the XBOX Live infrastructure when they already have their own proprietary infrastructure. Short of letting others know a GamerTag has their 360 turned on and logged into XBOX 360, the rest of the XBOX Live crap is just a nusiance to developers and subscribers. I'd be really frustrated if every

Re:Microsoft's cost model screws MMOG subscribers.

[Kaldaien]

The features you describe are part of the XBOX 360 dashboard, the other crap I was refering to has to do with the XBOX Live server infrastructure. Rankings, leaderboards, matchmaking, etc... none of it is relevant for a cross-platform MMOG. And if the XBOX Live Marketplace is used for updates, a player will have to download each update individually, kind of like the stupid WOW updater that makes you download 5 separate updates to go from version X.3 to X.8. The XBOX Live infrastructure is great for games th

Re:Microsoft's cost model screws MMOG subscribers.

[Saige]

Umm... what are you even talking about? There is NO option "Check for Upgrades" on any 360 game at all. The single dashboard update and the COD2 patch both informed the player when they connected that the update was available. You didn't have to look for it.

It's also not like you have to manually log in to Xbox Live - unless you deliberately set it that way. The console automatically does it. And even if you have it set to manual, it's all of selecting an account and pressing the button. No entering u

They Weren't Singling Out Xbox 360...

[Skankme]

If you follow the link to the full interview, he just used LIVE as an example , his comments were about "consoles" in general.

So, there need to be some changes in the business model, and we're keeping an eye on the technology - but we love console games, and I'd love to see Guild Wars on an Xbox [360] or a PlayStation 3.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 14931 [gamesindustry.biz]

Xbox live sucks ass now

[WickedClean]

It only recognized Xbox 360 games if you want to set up a gamer profile on xbox.com. I wanted to track my BattleFront kills and such. The whole Live Arcade thing is dumb, too. Most of those games or something like them can be played at Shockwave.com.

I know what he's talking about

[Mr_eX9]

As an avid Guild Wars player and fan of ArenaNet and its roots, I know what Strain is getting at.

Implementing an MMO on Xbox Live requires a break in continuity from the generic and limited "live-enabled" template, which has only been updated to add "no duh" features they had left out like voice chat from the Dashboard and voice messages. At its core, the current iteration of Live is basically indistinguishable than what you got in terms of online play from MechAssault or Crimson Skies.

Three companies ha

Re:I know what he's talking about

[elrous0]

can't imagine the XBox360 port isn't exactly the same.

Word is that it is just a crappy 480i port and doesn't even support voice chat. What a waste of disc space.

-Eric

Umm what?

[xtieburn]

I dont understand what hes asking for.

Live allows additional content. It allows for support. Nothing hes saying cant be done in the present system. Add to that the fact that he neither has a game on Live nor is planning one for live and I have to wonder what exactly is the point of this at all?

Not only are his comments vague they are also counter to the fact that square is already accomplishing what he wants and Final Fantasy XI is already working on live ready for full release.

Maybe hes talking with the ot

Re:Umm what?

[sparkMonkey]

Live definitely has the ability to update each user's xbox, which sounds like their main beef. However, it is very slow (at least with the old xbox). The other issue I see is how the games are hosted. I don't know if this is true for all games, but Halo 2 isn't hosted by a central server, and I think the same is true of Forza. Each game is hosted by a random member of the group in any given game. To run MMOGs, you can't rely on a random person's xbox to run the whole game for everyone. A central server is