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Elly Garnand

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Aug 2, 2024, 4:27:30 AM8/2/24

to dircohandi

From MSFT's side, I think it's more about adding value to their already excellent Xbox Live Gold service, and if they attract more customers to subscribe to Gold because of the features they're adding, great.

On the other hand, I've been a cord cutter for years. Why pay for a ton of content I don't care about when I can get most of the content I want for free? The rest of the content I want can either be watched via my quite cheap streaming-only Netflix account or by purchasing DVDs.

This Verizon FiOS deal doesn't do much for me. It's much the same as the Hulu deal with MSFT where you can only access the Hulu content on XBL Gold if you subscribe to Hulu Plus (which I have no reason or desire to do). Because the cable companies refuse to change, they're becoming irrelevant.

Yeah, well, it might not do a lot of that. I picked up an xbox at a garage sale with the intention of using it solely for streaming netflix. I didn't know that you had to subscribe to MS's service to be able to do that. It angered me, as Netflix doesn't (or shouldn't) actually use the xbox live service, doesn't add any value to the netflix service, almost doubles the cost of the service, and I'd get to give yet more money to Microsoft in exchange for exactly nothing.

The xbox went to the goodwill, and I've warned a few other people who were thinking of doing the same thing to avoid using the xbox for it. If Microsoft was a little less greedy, they may have actually sold me some games and made some money from me, instead of leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

I think you vastly underestimate how much you'd pay on an a la carte basis for the niche channels you list. AMC Networks has operating expenses of about $750 million. They obviously get revenue from ad sales, but the bulk of their revenue comes from cable operators. If instead of receiving payments from the 96 million US households that get AMC programming, they had to be paid by the households that actually want AMC programming (their highest-rated program, The Walking Dead, drew 6.6 million viewers Sunday night), the costs would be very high.

Cable providers just don't git it. All there off brand channels are only financially successful because of bundling channels. If you AMC's viewership is 96 Million, just think how few other really off brand cable channels reach.

I cut the cord about 2-3 years ago. Subscribed to NetFlix. Haven't looked back, doubt I will. Wake me up with HBO and Showtime(the only two cable offerings I really miss) are available w/o a monthly subscription to the crap that currently goes with them, and I'm in.

Would like to make a post about xbox .During the summer I paid for internet for the house so my boys had a gold membership that stopped in august .I find out today that my credit card has been charged the last 2 months for live which we do not use nor new we had .I run my laptop off my phone .If you think you have to have live I would wipe out your credit card info from your unit as I was told by Microsoft ANYONE can get into it and you to will be paying someone's funtime .Microsoft being the greedy people they are would of course not refund my money .

I'm a bit confused by the article. I think the author is ranting a little too much against cable companies and just not appreciating what is happening here. Picture this: Your house doesn't have every single room wired with a coaxial cable. You don't want to spend a ton of money wiring your house. You've got a room you would like your kids to watch Nick, Nick Jr, or Cartoon Network but this room has no coaxial. Now here's where it gets interesting. Your Xbox 360 is streaming live TV through the Internet. This isn't pre-recorded data files sitting on a Netflix or Hulu server. This is LIVE TV being streamed straight to your Xbox 360 through Wfi. In other words, this is (as far as I know) the first time you've been able to watch cable TV wirelessly. Sure there's the added expense of Xbox Live Gold but you can get those cards cheap if you look for discounts/sales AND you're not renting a cable box for $5-$10 a month.

The Xbox network, formerly known and commonly referred to as Xbox LIVE, is an online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft Gaming for the Xbox brand. It was first made available to the original Xbox console on November 15, 2002.[5][6][7][8] An updated version of the service became available for the Xbox 360 console at the system's launch in November 2005, and a further enhanced version was released in 2013 with the Xbox One.[9][10] This same version is also used with Xbox Series X and Series S. This service, in addition to a Microsoft account, is the account for Xbox ecosystem; accounts can store games and other content.

Xbox network service is available as both a free service and a subscription-based service known as Xbox Game Pass Core. In 2021, Microsoft renamed Xbox Live as simply the "Xbox network" to cover all of its services related to Xbox, and began slowly phasing out all "Live" branding until it was fully removed in 2023.[14]

Users from other countries are not officially supported, although it is possible for them to access Xbox network if they provide an address located in a country where Xbox network is officially available. The country selected during account creation affects the payment options, content, and services available to the user.[16] Previously, users were unable to change their account region, but in October 2012, Microsoft introduced an account migration tool as a pilot project, which allows the user to change their region and maintain their Xbox network profile. Subscriptions, such as that for Xbox Music, cannot be transferred with this method.[17]

On May 18, 2011, Microsoft announced that it planned to launch Xbox network in the Middle East within the next twelve months,[18] but it never occurred during that time period. However, on October 20, 2012, Microsoft officially announced the service will be launching in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in three days time.[19]On November 4, Microsoft announced that the service would be launched on November 29 in Argentina and Israel.[20] The service also appeared in the following month in Slovakia and Turkey. The service was launched in China in late 2014.[21]

As Microsoft developed the original Xbox console, online gaming was designated as one of the key pillars for the greater Xbox strategy. Sega had made an attempt to capitalize on the ever-growing online gaming scene when it launched the Dreamcast video game console in 1999, including online support as standard, with the SegaNet service in North America and Dreamarena in Europe.[22] Nevertheless, due to lack of widespread broadband adoption at the time, the Dreamcast shipped with only a dial-up modem while a later-released broadband adapter was neither widely supported nor widely available. Downloadable content was available, though limited in size due to the narrowband connection and the size limitations of a memory card.[23] The PlayStation 2 did not initially ship with built-in networking capabilities.

Microsoft, however, hoped that the Xbox would succeed where the Dreamcast had failed. The company determined that intense online gaming required the throughput of a broadband connection and the storage space of a hard disk drive, and thus these features would be vital to the new platform. This would allow not only for significant downloadable content, such as new levels, maps, weapons, challenges and characters, to be downloaded quickly and stored, but also would make it possible to standardize bandwidth intensive features such as voice communication. Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates both had a vision of making premium download content and add-ons that would attract many new customers. Based on this reasoning, the console included a standard Ethernet port (10/100) in order to provide connectivity to common broadband networks, but did not include a modem or any dial-up support, and its online service was designed to support broadband users only. Critics scoffed at it, citing poor broadband adoption at the turn of the century.[24][25]

Leading up to the launch, Microsoft enlisted several waves of beta testers to improve the service and receive feature feedback. The first wave of beta testers were given Re-Volt! (which was never released officially) and NFL Fever 2003 to beta test. Once beta testing concluded, Microsoft sent these beta testers a translucent orange memory card, a headset carrying case, and a beta tester t-shirt with the slogan "I've got great hands". When the service debuted, it lacked much of the functionality that later titles included, but Xbox Live grew and evolved on the Xbox and many aspects of the service were included with the Xbox 360 console out of the box, rather than through a later update. Microsoft granted Live-related patent that gives Xbox 360 users access to watch other gamers compete against each other over Xbox Live.[28]

The packaging for playable Xbox Live titles on the original Xbox console featured a trademark luminescent orange-gold bar underneath the Xbox header. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and Brute Force sported a Live "bubble" design, as they only featured downloadable content. It was changed later, wherein all Xbox Live titles included the universal orange-gold Live bar. By the time of the Xbox 360, all titles were required to provide at least a limited form of Xbox Live "awareness".[clarification needed] In July 2004, Xbox Live had reached 1 million online users.[29] In July 2005, Xbox Live had reached 2 million online users.[30]

On November 15, 2007, Microsoft celebrated Xbox Live's 5th anniversary by offering its then over 8 million subscribers the title Carcassonne free of charge and awarding gamers who had subscribed to Live since its inception 500 free Microsoft Points. Due to intermittent service interruptions during late December 2007 and early January 2008, Microsoft promised to offer a free Xbox Live Arcade game to all Xbox Live users as compensation, in an open letter to all Xbox Live members from Marc Whitten, Xbox LIVE General Manager.[31] Increased demand from Xbox 360 purchasers (the largest number of new user sign-ups in the history of Xbox Live) was given as the reason for the downtime.[32] On January 18, 2008, Microsoft announced Undertow would be offered free to both Gold and Free members for the week starting January 23 through January 27 as compensation.[33]