I hope that they both get rid of online fees with next gen and instead just charge for these game rental services like PS Plus, gold and gamepass. Paying to play online in general sucks.

yeah it's a bit ridiculous how you can't play FREE to play games on Xbox without a gold subscription, but you know what's absolutely absurd in my opinion? having to pay a sub to a company to access the other half of the game you already payed for and is running on third party p2p servers. blocking multiplayer access, regardless of price a game might have, behind a paywall is just something I can't ever get behind, no matter the console.

that's actually a good idea, let's press microsoft to do that

It's time to remove pay-to-play-online in general. It shouldn't have existed in the first place.

Who gives a shite! Start putting out AAA games

I spoke up about this issue on the Xbox feedback site without any replies from the Xbox team. And as an Xbox fan I don't like how Microsoft is not easily addressing this issue its like they are ignoring it which is very damn hypocritical of them. I hope people continue to criticize them about it until they stop the bs.

Sony, It's Time To Remove The Paywall For Cloud Saves.

I agree. But, if the past is any indication of the future, I would say it's more probable that Sony will start charging for FTP multiplayer next gen, than MS dropping this. Or we already forgot that multiplayer in general was free on PS last gen?

I do agree. Its time MS do something about this.

They really do. Unleas they enjoy being douche bags like EA, 2K, etc.

I guess cross play for 1 game is good enough?

Agreed, also my internet was down a few days and I noticed I couldn't view achievements like wtf? Since when couldn't you get achievements offline?

Because it's all about taking down Sony. Since Sony "finally" allowed cross play, we haven't heard anything about it since. Just so people know, Sony had cross play since ps3, and still currently has like 5 times the games enabled with cross play, it was just all Microsoft could do at the time to gang up on Sony for a worthless endeavor. The same goes for this. Sony had free online, and still has nearly every f2p game not requiring ps+ to play online.

hold on a sec? MS makes people pay for f2p games? lol wow!
this was the same company that was calling out sony for being anti consumer?
you can't make this Shiit up.

Y'all are acting like y'all will stop paying for your gold subscription if they made this change lol

Yup, they should announce this right before e3

LOL here it is. It's been like this for ages. Sony NEVER had a paywall for Free-To-Play and Microsoft did, so WHY NOW has it all of a sudden got attention and become an issue? It's because pathetic gaming journalists are looking for more clickbait. Because the majority of Xbox fans obviously don't care. They just don't. Gaming websites are looking for a topic to make multiple articles about.

Now the media will try and force this to be an issue when clearly it's not. I'm a massive PS Fan, but this is bullcrap. Why didn't you write an article about this years ago? The answer is because no one cared, and they still don't. If they cared, Xbox fans would have been badgering Microsoft on Twitter about it years ago.

It's a pointless act Microsoft have kept.

The paywall is for the online multiplayer service. Whether a game is "free"-to-play or not has no bearing on it. The broader discussion still applies: Should online multiplayer on consoles require a service fee? It doesn't on PC.

I assume they will change this for next gen. They will be making huge renevue from growing gsme pass and they will also be charging a fee to use its xcloud streaming service. So it would make sense to eliminate the basic live payment. So most likely thah wont happen until next gen. But since it's free on pc and phill stated they have a lot of work ahead to re work the windows gaming aspect. It's all going to work together next gen

I've turned many would be xboxone buyers that are adults buying it for their kids on the fact that on ps4 you dont need ps plus to play fortnite and and all the rest of the free to play games online, while on xboxone you need to buy gold to play fortnite and every game online.

Why did MS have to wait until Sony enabled cross play to remove the F2P paywall? Was MS only keeping it because Sony didn't have cross play? Punishing its user base for Sony's decisions?

Why remove it when there are suckers willing to pay and even defend it?

I love how uninformed ppl are on this website before making claims and flames

1) players and Xbox fans didn't initially request crossplay support! It's developers like Epics games, Psionix, Namco and others that made the request to Sony.

2) Microsoft didn't beg for Crossplay nor Nintendo (they only ask for Minecraft) again it's 3rd party developers (you know not OWNED by Nintendo, MS or Sony) who made the request and Epic Game's Fortenite was probably the nail in the coffin.

So No! it's not the same thing as Xbox silver user players requesting free Internet play on Xbox1for Free to play games.
If Epic Games start a similar campaign against MS for charging then we could say it's the same but for the moment it's not.

And yes I agree that it would be cool if MS remove the paywall for free to play games, it would also be cool if Sony would let me keep my PS3 PS+ purchases forever like Gold, It would be cool if Shareplay was on Xbox, It would be cool if BC exists on Ps4. and so on...

Mr. Microsoft Tear down this wall.

Lame article. You have and xbox you have get xbox live. Non issue.