Why do you pay for internet? [Serious]

[FlyFish998]

I have never understood Xbox 360/Xbox One users. I have bought both consoles and they are great, but I prefer the PS3/4 for all of my online games.

I honestly do not understand why Xbox users are willing to pay a yearly internet subscription fee when you can easily get free internet using PlayStation. The two consoles are virtually identical so I really don't see that being a deciding factor when choosing which one to buy.

(*Obligatory Halo Mention & Credit here*)

Other than the Halo series, which I must admit is fantastic, I don't see the appeal in the Xbox models at all.

Why are so many people willing to spend the extra money? What am I missing?

 

[Stay Puft]

Xbox Live Gold offers you a lot of benefits for your console, the same way that PlayStation Plus offers benefits for PS owners. First of all, you get Games with Gold, which is two free games every month, so right there you've made up for the yearly $60 subscription. You also get Deals with Gold that offer discounts on DLC and games, which also helps justify the yearly subscription.

Finally, it's pretty well known that the online service with Xbox is solid and more stable, and generally better than the PlayStation in terms of reliability of the service being up. I'm not saying this as a fanboy statement (I honestly don't care of the PS vs Xbox "war") but it's generally accepted by people, even PlayStation owners.

 

[Ridge]

PSN is needed for many online features for the PS4 as well now. The main thing we need to remember is that to keep servers and infastructure up and running constantly it costs money, we shouldn't just entitled to access something for free that takes a lot of resources to keep operating.

 

[pwarbi]

I was also going to say that as a PS4 owner, there isn't a great deal you can do if you don't have a PlayStation+ account active. Some games you can't even access without the use of the service.

To get the most out of both Microsoft and Sony consoles, your going to need internet access.

 

[healzzz]

This is definitely a downside to XBOX 360 and ONE. However, there are a lot of XBOX-exclusive games, and as others have mentioned, it's a really good, stable system and connection. I'm not sure if this is still true, but it used to be that you could download certain games for cheap or for free. Castle Crashers was an absolutely excellent game that we didn't pay a dime for, in example.

 

[Shortie]

A lot has changed since the post of this thread and now, there are so many different benefits to having Xbox Game Pass Ultimate which has Game Pass and Xbox Live rolled into one. It really is the best deal for Xbox Live and having access to hundreds of games as well. I believe that PlayStation now charge for their online as well but they also have PS Plus which is similar to Xbox Game Pass.