Online gaming

[audi321]

Hi all. Sorry to be stupid but I’m some 20 years out of date with games consoles and my son is nattering for one.

However he tells me that a PS4 is £50 to play online! Is that right? Are there any other alternatives? Xbox, Nintendo, etc? How do they get away with charging that?? What exactly do they (Sony) provide for the money? I’m sure it was free when I was playing all those years ago?

Thanks for any advice.

[paul99]

PS Plus is £38 for 12 months if you get it from cdkeys.com. Yes you do need it to play online games now (same with Xbox live) but you also get 3/4 free games every month, occasionally some very good AAA titles, pretty good value when that's factored in really, they only work while you have a subscription though.

Also if your console is registered to your son and he is younger than the age rating for the free game/s, I don't think he can play it. Just something to factor in when you set it up.

Edited by paul99 on Monday 14th May 22:59

[Brainpox]

They have you over a barrel. If you want to play online you have to pay. If you don't want to pay then your only option is PC.

PSN was free before but Xbox Live was better, which you had to pay for. I guess the constant revenue stream means they can develop the service more rapidly.

As above you do get a few free games every month and some of them are pretty good. Rocket League has exploded because it was offered as a free game for a month. There are also a fair few discounts on the store for PS+ members.

Ultimately though you don't have an option. They put the price up a bit last year too but they haven't added anything since.

If you find an offer for 15 months for 12 or something then make the most of it.

[toon10]

The PS subscription has gone up to £50 I believe. Mine didn't auto renew as it had an expired card on the account and they didn't bother to email me to let me know. Instead they cancelled my subscription. I signed up again and got it for £37. I think they'll claim that you are paying for them to have a stable infrastructure in place to accommodate the huge online gaming market. It does seem a little better recently as in the past the network has been down a few times.

It's only worth it if you are using it. I'm on COD Ghosts pretty much every night for an hour or two and my son is on his PS4 most of the time he's at mine. If it was for occasional use, I'd probably not bother.

[Jasandjules]

Your son could easily spend over 50 hours a year online (hell, he can do that a month sometimes I would wager!). So less than £1 per hour.... Pretty good VFM.

Yes it used to be free but that was years ago now!

[Steven_RW]

Just part of the cost.

As said, you get some free games thrown in and the benefit of consoles is you can buy all games second hand from CEX, Gumtree or wherever and easily save the £50 another way to balance off.

RW

[audi321]

Thanks guys. Is it per machine or per user? In other words can my youngest son use the online stuff too or do I need to buy another license for him?

[toon10]

audi321 said:

Thanks guys. Is it per machine or per user? In other words can my youngest son use the online stuff too or do I need to buy another license for him?

It's per account so both myself and my son use the same PS account on multiple devices. It's also a good way of monitoring friends lists and seeing what messages are being sent if you want some parental control. My boy was young when it was first set up. He hates the fact that now he's 17, I can see all the stupid messages his mates send him now!

[Snubs]

Brainpox said:

Rocket League has exploded because it was offered as a free game for a month.

Ahhhh downloading Rocket Legue for free. A brilliant move if ever I've made one. I've just had a look and it's currently £15.99, which is still excellent value. I've probably spent about that on DLC over the years, but then i thought Rocket League did DLC well. You knew exactly what you were getting, the price was low and being cosmetic only it really didn't matter whether you had it or not (unlike map packs). I see they've introduced loot crates somewhere along the way, which is a bit of a shame. It's one of those games i might go for 6 months without playing, but whenever i do i really enjoy it.

The weird thing I used to find with PS auto-renewal was that Sony were on my bank's fraud list for some reason. I think they've sorted it now but for years i used to get an annual call from the fraud lot at the bank telling me they'd declined the transaction because they thought Sony were on the rob

[coldel]

I used to be on PS network for free and bought a PS4 last week and paid up - to be honest looking at the free games this month none are of interest. So effectively the £50 so far is just to give me access, which I really havent used yet as am just playing GoW. I'm not really into shooters like CoD so wonder how much I will actually use this paid for online service?

[The_Jackal]

I may be stating the obvious but get him the console all his mates are playing a particular game on.

[Lazadude]

Just to add encase people didnt know, if multiple profiles share an xbox, only one of them needs to have a Gold account.

So if you have the Gold subscription, any other account on the xbox can still play online/get games with gold etc. Its also very easy to set them up as a childs account under you as a parent using microsoft "family".

You can then limit time they play, what age range of titles they can play (so lockdown by PEGI rating), and who they can talk to/receive messages from.

The_Jackal said:

I may be stating the obvious but get him the console all his mates are playing a particular game on.

And very much this. If you are friendly with the other parents, have a discussion with them about it.

[RTB]

My eldest got a PS4 at Christmas. I sprung for a PS+ subscription and have to say it's great value. There have been several games (Ratchet and Clank, Rayman Legends) which both my boys have played all the way through. That's paid for the subscription already. Plus I've got Deus Ex and Mad Max Fury Road which I've played quite a bit of in the evening.

As others have said, find out what he wants to play, find out what his friends play and try not to feel too ripped off by the online subscriptions for PS4 or XBox.