Comment on Xbox’s leadership shift proves it: the gamer era is over, AI runs the show now
Abundance114@lemmy.world 1 week agoI dont think the analogy works. Gas taxes are universal in the U.S. for road fuel, they also fund infrastructure, not stock holders and CEOs.
A tax is not an arbitrary subscription fee, it’s an ongoing expensive.
In order for your analogy to work, the fee would need to be created out of no where for no reason other than self enrichment; and there would need to be a viable alternative that provides practically the exact same benefit with no fee.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 1 week ago
It works pretty well. The console network fees fund infrastructure, the employees that run the infrastructure, etc. neither the gas tax nor the console network fees are arbitrary. As for the “required renewal despite not using it” thing we just have other things for that in the form of vehicle registration.
Abundance114@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I mean where they spend the money is irrelevant. If I rob you, is it suddenly okay if I spend your money responsibly? No.
PC has had online multiplayer since the creation of the internet, and PC did it without ever having a fee on top of internet access.
I would also argue that playstation plus membership fees, with all their millions of dollars, have not created a better environment than what available on PC for free, so…
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 1 week ago
So it’s ok to pay money for infrastructure for your car to use, but when you have to pay for the infrastructure for your video games it’s robbery? Now I feel like you’re the one being arbitrary.
This tells me you weren’t around for the early days of PC gaming. On the contrary, PC gaming went through a couple phases when it came to online multiplayer. Early multiplayer games often didn’t have matchmaking or dedicated server discovery at all, then there was the Gamespy era where a bunch of games delegated their multiplayer matchmaking to a third party with limited functionality and ads unless you paid a premium subscription.
It was the game consoles that really fixed multiplayer early on with their party systems that persisted outside of each game.
Abundance114@lemmy.world 1 week ago
We already discussed this. The Playstation Plus subscription isnt paying for internet infrastructure. PC has no monthly fee, and it’s infrastructure is exactly the same.
Oh I was… So Xbox game pass released in 2002, PlayStation followed much later in 2010.
In 2002 Warcraft 3’s multiplayer was fine. In 2002 Battlefield 1942 was fine; It was a good as Halo’s multiplayer, which somehow ALSO had fine multiplayer at release in 2001 despite the subscription service for multiplayer not until a year after the game had already launched.
Even if I gave you that, the subscription “fee” isn’t what fixed multiplayer design, that was fixed by… Game developers.