And if that was all XBL was about you might have a point, but its not.
Its main feature, the Gold subription literally just enables you to do what is on most platforms free to do. What does Gold do so much better than what they do on PC for free?
Based on the evidence we have available one has been shown to be more secure than the other, while that may change in the future all we have is the history of the past issues with PSN. Do not underestimate the potential impact that had for many on the PSN network.
Sony may we have made PSN more secure than XBL now, that unfortunately came at a massive cost (both financial and non-financial) to them.
The big impact was the downtime and the faith in the company. I am confident that Sony must have put a lot of effort to make it much more secure now and others must have learned lessons from it too so better security all aound.
However as you say you would pay, maybe not all the time, but you would still pay.
In my opinion most would complain quite a bit about it (the threads here I can already picture), then they would accept it and the vast majority would pay and within a short period of time most would then justify it to themselves as well.
I still doubt they will charge but if they did charge I guess they will put a lot more value than what Microsoft is currently doing so it won't be as bad a deal.
There will be still likely be quite a bit of a hit on total number of users gaming online. Sure most would start paying for it as long as it is not some extreme cost in the end.
To be blunt why should it be free? Both Sony and MS have to set-up and manage server arrays to handle just the cloud storage side of things, those activities have both a one-time cost and re-occurring cost to them, why should they just give it away?
Given the amount of cloud storage you can get for free and features on the web, I don't see why you won't get a small amount of storage for free in future. PC games do it free to an extent.
Do you pay for them over and above you XBL membership? No.
I pay for my XBL for the on-line gaming, the access to the other functionality (such as Facebook, IE, Lovefilm, etc.) is simply a bonus. If that was all I was paying to access you would have a very valid point, but its not.
You are still paying for stuff that vast majority of its features are free on other platforms.
That hasn't happened to date and currently shows no sign of happening. Sony would first have to offer a service that matches or exceed XBL in every way (and as I have said not just features), then offer it for free and then steal significant sales from MS.
To put in in a personal perspective, my first console of this gen was a PS3, even with the free on-line I bought a 360 and pay for XBL (years after I got my PS3). The reason? Simply because as things stand right now its worth it for a more secure and stable platform.
Why does Microsoft not charge to use its Live platform on Windows then? They have admitted competition on this doesn't really allow them too. Sony don't have to exceed what Microsoft are, just offer the same level of features and you will see most likely a lot more people going to Sony.
It is worth it for you currently I understand, and that is why they have been able to get away with it for so long but given the margin between PS3 and 360 currrently, imagine when majority of advantages are free now on their rival platform. Microsoft were lucky in that Sony never took them serious enough so never saved space in Game OS for the extra features that 360 XBL Gold users can get but with most likely PS4, they will have a very capable, highly integrated online platform from the get go. It will be less compelling for current 360 users to have to pay for a similar service again if in feature set offers no standing out feature. Worse still if Sony exceeds everything XBL Gold does and does it all for free.
That helps prove my point. Sony didnt catch up to the 360 in sales until 2012. Now imagine if the 360 had Blu Ray. The sales wouldnt even be close. Thats even with the 360 having a massive and true bad rep about being a very unreliable console. Very true especially the RROD. Even with all the problems and failure rate, it still was ahead of the PS3 in sales until 2012.
BTW the 360 also has 3D. Gears Of War 3, Halo CE Anniversary, Crysis 1, Black Ops 2, and many more.
As for exclusives, yes thats debatable. I think there are a lot better exclusives on the 360 but thats just my opinion.
If the Durango/ Infinity truly comes out with blu ray, its going to outsell the Orbis for sure.
It is not as simple as that. 360 would have been released similar time as PS3 and would also cost more if it did have Blu-ray. RROD should have also helped in sales department like YLOD so it is not one way only.
At the moment, going by rumours even with next Xbox most likely having Blu-ray drive, I think it will be going back to Xbox 1 levels of success and highly successful period for Sony. I wouldn't put it past Microsoft given what I have seen of Windows 8 regarding design.
It will be interesting to see today what will most likely shape the rest of this decade in regards to gaming.
