Is Microsoft incurring a loss by banning people?

I feel that people will switch to PS3 now. I know that XBOX live is much better than PS network, but the fact is many people buy XBOX only because it can be modded. Moreover PS3 has blu ray support. Also they will loose a huge amount of gold subscribers! What do you guys think? Wasn't Microsoft better the other way round by not banning people. I mean people are paying for their consoles and games like call of duty still sell by large numbers.

 

haha i guess their 4th quarter profits will tell us the story lol. No one can say whether the amount of xboxs now sold plus original games will be enough to compensate for the 15 million is xbox live revenue lost per month with the bans, but some of those already have live again....it's to tough to call we will see what their console sales look like in november and december

 

As soon as i was banned i bought a new console, so probably not considering the amount of people who will go out to buy a replacement console and most probably stop using back up games and actually go out and buy legitimate copies. As to whether or not they might go to Playstation, i actually heavily considered getting on instead, but it came down to xbox live and the fact that i have 15 friends who have live and 2 people with psn. I'm sure other people will be on the same position as me.

 

Got banned, if Im to buy a newer console, I'll go for a PS3 and ill get all the legit games I want to play online + God of War 3 once it goes out. I guess I'll be using PS3 for online, and XBOX 360 for offline games. Moreover we dont know if the newer XBOXs could be modded, so even the XBOX route will be for Legit only.
BUT NOWAY im getting a new Xbox 360.

PS: I can even use my PC to play online since most HUGE titles are available on XBOX/PS3/PC (except exclusives).

 

As soon as the ban wave hit I bought 20 Gotta love that walmart deal a week and a half ago. +170$ all day long

*Peeps will say there switching however 99% will buy another 360 in the long run cause xlive rules and there's always hope that iextreme lite will be as good as advertised.

 

I think most people will buy a new console. Ps3 sucks LOL.

 

@gameover9: PS3 sucks in a way it doesnt play backups, but on the other hand, people to avoid bans (to be sure) can only play legit games, hence in my honest opinion, going PS3, more than never, is a serious business now. you can play online legit games (for free), and go xbox for their exclusives offline. IMMO

 

True and False. There are many games made for the 360 that is not made for the PS3 that are awesome. Of course, Ps3 seems to be improving now that I see Mw2 is there.

 

I dont know the comparison between Mw2 PS3 and XBOX 360 in terms of online gaming.
Also when we say XBOX LIVE is better tahn PSN, do we mean online gaming or other services such us shops etc?

 

Xbox live is better than PSN in every way except price. I'm cool with paying a little money for the best online gaming service. And the money that I give them is well worth the tons of free demos, awesome online multiplayer experience, and the other small things like Game with Fame.

Last I read, PSN's servers went down the night that MW2 came out. This shows that they are unprepared. Xbox servers were running steady all night long.

So, if you are too cheap to pay as little as $35 for 13 months of Xbox live on eBay, you are going to get an inferior service.

 

Both.

In terms of gaming related features, here's some of the things Live has that PSN doesn't have: -

Cross-game chat
Party mode
Consistent invites/join system (varies from game to game on PSN)
See exactly what players are doing in all games (only supported in a couple of titles in PSN)
Private voice chat
Voice messaging
Reputation system
Reporting system

The inconsistency of PSN annoys me. In COD4 for example, you can only invite people if they're already playing COD4, so you have to send them a message saying "wanna play COD4?" then send them an invite once they're actually in the game. Live is also far more reliable in my experience. Modern Warfare 2 was a total mess on the PS3 for a few days because the online system was totally f***ed.

As far as the stores go, Xbox Live gets 1-3 new XBLA games every week and all of them have demos. Sometimes PSN gets no new games in an update and only about a third of all the games have demos. It's also easier to find stuff on Live. Pricing wise, the same games are regularly cheaper on Live too, at least in the UK. A lot of games and DLC that are 800 MS Points on Live (£6.80) are £7.99 on PSN and 99% of the time they're available on Live earlier.

There are other annoyances with the PS3 too, such as only being able to sign in with 1 account at a time and only being able to use 1 headset at a time. Also, title updates don't work like they do on the 360. You can sometimes find yourself playing a new game for the first time and having to download multiple large patches, all of which have to be installed. Downloaded games from PSN have to be installed too, as do demos.

I use my PS3 only for exclusives because of some of the things I've mentioned. If you've got a banned 360 then the PS3 isn't a bad purchase cos then you get to play the exclusives that both have to offer and the PS3 is a good media box and it has the Blu-Ray player, but I wouldn't buy a PS3 if you're looking for a free version of Xbox Live cos PSN in its current form is definitely not that. If you use a lot of the features Live has and you're a big online gamer, you will notice the differences. I guess a big part of it though, is how many friends you have with PS3s that you can play games with.

EDIT - Or in simple terms I could have just said what the guy above said, lol: -

 

hrmm lets see 1 million consoles banned... all the kids will run out and replace them at a cost of $100 to $200

so microsoft is getting a mere 100,000,000.00 to 200,000,000.00 out of this latest wave...

 

Yeah, cos the consoles cost nothing to make right? lol. AFAIK, MS still make a slight loss on the actual hardware which they recoup through sales of accessories, games, Live subs etc.

Also, the 1,000,000 consoles banned number comes from some random blogger. He said it was 600,000 in the US and Canada and then other news sites added on 400,000 to cover the rest of the world. Even if it was true, you're assuming that everyone that was banned would go out and buy a brand new console but you're talking about revenue, when it's profit that matters.

 

i dunno i read the 1 million report on cnn.com

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/12/cnet.xbox.live.ban/index.html

 

CNN got the figure from Information Week who didn't say where they got it from, but the original source if you trace it back is here: -

http://pinoycosplay.blogspot.com/20...k-xbox-live-accounts.html?zx=2762f11e6ea50f6e

MS have said they will not give out numbers. Some anonymous guy who knows another anonymous guy that works in an MS call center is not a trusted source of information.

 

Well put funksoulb.
I got a "PlayStation loyalist" nephew who visited me for a week, about 3 weeks ago. After being on Xbox Live all week, he saw those differences for himself. He always thought I was up-talking Xbox and down-talking PS3. Now his offer to me is to trade me his PS3 for one of my Xboxes with a physical mod, windows & lights. No flash, he's afraid of the banhammer. Seeing as to how I got a couple of unused 360s, and could use a 2nd PS3, I took him up on it.

 

I can't really say if they will lose money or not, but I would think so. I have to think the majority of pirates won't go legit, but some will. Maybe MS will come out ahead. I was banned. I won't ever buy another Xbox 360. If I wanna play online I'll play on private servers on my PC, or if they figure out a way to mod it, possibly get a PS3. If they hadn't banned me they would have at least continued to get my $8 a month. Now they won't get anything.

 

But if people buy a PS3 instead, they'll be buying games, so while MS may lose out on a small amount of revenue in Live subscriptions, the games industry benefits. Many people will just buy a 360 and keep it unmodded, so MS benefits in that way. I think a lot of this "I'm buying a PS3!" stuff is just sour grapes anyway.

 

Yes it is. Everybody knows that modding leads to banning, yet mod anyway, and when the ban occurs, they complain, and threaten to jump ship.

What's the benefit of jumping ship anyway? Nothing other than BluRay & exclusives. Buying a new (unmodded) 360 is the same as buying a PS3. You gotta buy retail games. But to go to PS3 simply because Microsoft banned you is immature. They were supposed to ban you if you flashed.

 

wow you could not be more wrong. While I do think xbl has an edge over psn I know its not much of one. the things that xbox live does well are connecting you with other gamers quickly i.e party chat and sending game invites that people can access from the dashboard.

But actual online gaming experience goes to psn hands down. They make their first party developers use dedicated servers for gods sake dude. Imagine playing a game where you don't see enemies disappear and reappear several feet away from where you were first looking at them. imagine plugging a guy with shotgun shells and seeing him fall to the ground every time, not just when you have the faster connection. imagine a game where a lag switch is flipped and the guy flipping it stops moving completely! (I noticed this happening in uncharted 2 when people lag they just stop moving, you can tell because the person will stop but the rest of their team will keep moving normally allowing you to kill them, or they will just get dropped from the game if their connection does not recover lol)

All this and more can be yours when you play online on the psn lol.

I can be the first to admit xbl does a great job with the extra features and man do I wish the psn had party chat or at least private voice chat while playing a game. but when I play game after game of seamless mayhem without most of the ridiculous glitches and lag tricks that my favorite xbox only games have, it sure makes me glad to own a ps3.

And no I'm not a fanboy I recognize the good and the bad of both systems, but if you must..... Flame on lol