Whose Services Are Planning To Be The Most Reliable? PS Plus vs Xbox Live Gold

"For the longest time, games consoles have been the number one place to enjoy gaming in your household. As time has passed we have seen improved AI, graphics, ways of displaying a story and even the integrity of the console itself. The Xbox 360, PS3 and the Wii U have transcended to become more than just games consoles as they can allow you to listen to music, watch movies, check what you missed on TV and even go onto the internet. As the next generation is on the horizon and another evolution of gaming is coming with it, should we now class games consoles as services instead of just gaming devices?"

[GarrusVakarian]

Based on which service has been the best THIS gen, i'd have to say PS Plus. This year is the first time i have bought it and the amount of "free" games and themes and avatars you get is amazing value for money, and they are relatively new too. Paid for XBLG for four years and now i regret it, never cared about apps, and apart from that, you don't really get anything else.

I hope MS steps it up with XBLG for Xbox One, some "free" newer games would be nice.

[Gazondaily]

Well in terms of value then yeah PS PLUS appears better but in terms of reliability, I would definitely go with Xbox Live.

[GarrusVakarian]

Ive been disconnected from that service too many times to give it that. And then it tells you that its your internet connection when everything else in the house is connected fine all day long.

[Hellsvacancy]

I don't get this whole "reliability" argument, the PSN does what it should, I don't ever have problems playing games online, played BF3 last night for a few hours, only time I got disconnected was when I brought down a chopper with an Igla "Banned From The Server"

[mcstorm]

@Septic I have to agree I have had more issues with PSN than Xbox live but regarding PSN on PS4 and Xbox live on One no one will know until they are both released.

[ImG2theB]

It's like comparing Walmart and Target. One is cheap and the other has a nicer experience.

[Gazondaily]

Well, judging by the past pedigree of both services, I would say the Xbox One but I don't know; I get a feeling that MS are rushing a lot of things at this stage.

Some of the X1's services are quite ambitious and rely on Kinect functionality and really, the voice recognition stuff really needs to be on point if it is to pass the test.

[TimeSkipLuffy]

Since I don't play online multiplayer the one that get me games to play while I am a member or for keep will be the one that win me offer. Currently it is PS+.
I don't mind buying Gold Live if they continue a free game a month. Well at least it should be one retail game and one "indie/digital only" game each month... to keep or pump up the freebies ;D

[jessupj]

Well PSN has been more than adequate this generation for me. I can't remember the last time I got dc'ed in an online game.

Also downloading patches and games off the store is super quick for me.

[avengers1978]

I would assume they're both planning to be reliable, only time will tell witch one is the most reliable

[punisher99]

"Whose Services Are Planning To Be The Most Reliable?" As for as reliability goes. Which ever one that gets attacked the least will more than likely end up being the more reliable.

[Belking]

That's easy. Which one has always been the most reliable? We all know that's been xbox live. That won't change just because we are getting new hardware.

[Ripsta7th]

Whoaa you're down at 2 bubbles, soon we will be down to one :/ and all because we havent been bandwagoning the ps4 . Sad that so called gamer sites cant accept other company than their beloved Sony

[MasterCornholio]

The only reason why you two lose bubbles is because of your trolling.

:)

Im sure you will join GreenPowerz one bubble trolling club soon.

BTW before the bubble reset i had one bubble and thats due to me making fun of Nintendo and Kinect.

[Foxhound922]

You guys should try defending your stance with good reasoning and facts to back them up. Maybe that's why you don't have bubbles. There are plenty of xbox lists who carefully back up what they have to say with references, that's why they have more bubbles...belking never has anything good or reputable to say besides his fanboy rants and opinions.

[punisher99]

@Ripsta7th:

Are you can just simply stop trolling playstation articles and comment with an open mind.

[Ripsta7th]

Reliable id say Xbox live because of their experience and how good it was this gen, it can only improve.Value wise i still think you get more out of PS plus w its free monthly games and auto updates(saves) and the featues we have yet to find out about

[MasterCornholio]

Now that we have to play to pay online, PSN will be a much more reliable service than before. If you add the value of Playstation Plus with its instant game collection it gets even better and in my opinion surpasses XBOX Live.

Dont believe me well heres proof of that.

"Sony detailed the tough decision it took to make the PlayStation Plus premium subscription mandatory for those who want to play PlayStation 4 games online, saying that the extra money helps the company improve online features and services."

http://news.softpedia.com/n...

[Ripsta7th]

Play to pay online? Lol your drunk go home :p
That'd be Fucking awesome thought , id play all day

[MasterCornholio]

Oops i meant pay to play online. This is the number one reason why XBOX Live is so reliable is because they spend the extra revenue to maintain the servers.

[Mystogan]

300.000 servers though? They will never catch up to Xbox Live's reliability.

[MasterCornholio]

And how many of them are virtual? And those 300,000 servers are available to anyone who wishes to rent them from Microsoft.

Sorry but if you think that every single XBOX One game will have dedicated servers you will be extremely disappointed with XBOX Live.

[MasterCornholio]

"The company has also confirmed that they aren’t 300,000 physical servers but virtualized cloud computing resources. Virtual servers means each physical server can host up to 1000 other servers or more with equal amount of resources."

http://www.gamechup.com/xbo...

[BlaqMagiq24]

And yet there is no proof that every single Xbone game will have them. MS couldn't even secure them for their flagship games this gen like Halo. Yet Sony has done that this gen.

[nextgengaming_pr]

Ive played on both services and in terms of the network and playing "online" most games were p2p on both and offered the same gaming and was dependent on the hosts isp. However Sony had games with more dedicated servers so they had a plus on that side.
Microsoft has whispered and made comments about dedicated servers for "all" games but the reality they haven't confirmed that and have only mentioned that servers are now cheaper for developers but that doesnt mean all games will have dedicated servers, so ill wait to see how that pans out. Microsoft has a tendency of over promising and then retracting as they have been doing so far with initially saying 21 countries would see Xbone release simultaneously and now its like 13, then touting voice recognition and so forth with xbone but now will only be done at a later date and certain countries and other things that just shows how unprepared they really were when Sony announced ps4.

In the end i think they will both be reliable but im inclined to think that Sony is more prepared then Microsoft this time around and their service will be top dog this coming gen but of course i could be wrong.

[staticdash22]

PlayStation Plus IMO. When my subscription runs out, I don't lose control of everything on my console. The apps aren't part of the paywall and that makes the service that much more appealing. I'm getting so much free games and the quality of those really convince me to keep subscribing. I always knew what I was getting from Playstation Plus. Great quality games, cloud storage, and weekly discounts. With xbox live, I know that I'm getting a good online service with faster speeds and more protection against hacking.

With xbox live, there were lots of times where my subscription ran out and I couldn't use my money to renew it. I had to wait until pay day, so the console just remained useless for periods of time. I hate that. You feel disconnected from the game community, your friends, and the social aspect of gaming. With a paywall for online on ps4, that will only improve the infastructure. Add in the fact that Gaikai and Rackspace will have support in establishing Sony's cloud servers, it can only get better.

[Unknown]

Azure > Gaikai + Rackspace. There is no comparison. MS is like a pioneer in the cloud servicing arena. XBL isn't as prone to hacking and has like an uptime percentage of 99.95 percent which is crazy. PSN...not so much so. I get where you're coming from with XBL having a closed architecture but I'm more than willing to pay that cost if it grants me a better service.

[_cyrax]

For me i'd rather go with ps+ cuz naturally people like free stuffs and i think ps+ is doing a better job in that aspect

[skydragoonity]

Playstation Plus for me.

[Stuntz]

how can you compare PSN to XBL lets be serious folks, fanboyism to the side. XBL has had the best online gaming network/experience for like 12 years. No way in this world PSN will surpass the experience you get online from XBL. You are comparing 300,000 servers a network that Microsoft actually owns, to a network that PSN rents from companies and they only have i think 15,000 servers. The answer is obvious.

[staticdash22]

LOL everytime I see that claim, I chuckle. We have no idea how many physical servers those are. You guys ate that claim right up for bragging rights. Now, notice how Microsoft has shied away from explaining this.

[IcicleTrepan]

Physical servers don't really matter. The article is talking about reliability. And you will find microsoft servers in all aspects of business across the entire world holding a high standard of uptime reliability. I don't see any Sony servers anywhere except on Sony products.

[Supermax]

I remember psn going down for a month and my personal info being hacked dont recall that with my Xbox live.

[staticdash22]

Playstation plus does not handle online gaming, xbox live does. The profit goes straight into the online infrastructure. PlayStation plus is a different service.

Now it handles it, but this gen it did not.

[thebudgetgamer]

Do companies plan for less reliability?

This works pretty well, but I think it's too reliable.

[JuniorCE]

Well, if you want free games... PS+ is way better and cheaper than Live.

[Regis]

Free games that are rentals

I payed 35 dollars for Xbox gold and I have no problems with that due to deals on amazon and I have two years ready and waiting.

[JuniorCE]

No rentals... I mean if you have PS+ those games belongs to you

[Unknown]

Looking at the history of the two services and the fact that the XO will have 300,000 dedicated servers to the PS4's 30 to 50k I will have to definitely say that Xbox Live is the winner by a wide margin.

[hazardman]

From experience I'm going to say XBL. PSN is not far behind tho. For this gen anyways!
I would also like to add that I'm taking a wait and see approach as I haven't had any hands on time with either service(next gen) to give an honest opinion.

[XboxFun]

Xbox's of course, I have heard and been told that PS3 has an update every other day that takes 15 to 20 minutes. Now that might not seem much and it isn't but it is highly inconvenient when all you want to do is turn on your system and play TLOU.

The constant updates and patches get old not to mention there's always a schedule maintenance downtime article popping up on this site for Sony's online.

Xbox for sure has the best service and most reliable.

[jaren92]

Idc how powerful the ps4 is you are insane if you think ps plus will even come close to being as good as Xbox live its like pigs flying it will never happen

[EXVirtual]

Guys? Are we seriously gonna argue about this? Online services? Really?

[PlayStation_4]

Right now, XBLG is EASILY the more profitable service.

However I expect that to change, especially if Sony can regain the NA market.

[nextgengaming_pr]

I really believe that most ppl on here saying that "live" has been superior than psn for online gaming have never tried both networks, please enlighten me how much better "live" is for playing online when most games are p2p and use the same servers from the devs!!!! I game online every single day and never have issues with online play on my psn except for the p2p games where the host disconnects and ppl get kicked out that happens on both systems. Stop with the fanboy crap lets be realist here.

Ps3 has an update every other day? lol hahahahahaha "i have heard" Im done with this topic to much fanboy sauce in here.

[AceBlazer13]

I think Sony is going to step their game up this gen.I'll put my money on them.

[Jamaicangmr]

Ummm what did you say? Anyway reliability isn't something we the consumers plan on, we can only hope for reliability. Personally i hope PSN but thats all it is hope.

[hankmoody]

Xbox Live servers being upped to 300,000 tells me that they'll at least be running pretty consistently.

[eman3d]

I see now, N4G is the home of Sony fanboys, no doubt about it.

How can a company (Sony) who's been hacked and just started getting into the service of online gaming be considered better then a company (Microsoft) who has been doing it for over 15 years with nothing but praise from it's customers and the gaming industry???

Sony is not known for creating networks while Microsoft is, its what they do well before they made the Xbox gaming systems yet you people throw that fact in the trash and actually put Sony on a pedestal in comparison. Amazing!

Not to mention Microsoft just invested $700 million dollars in more servers which will power their Cloud initiative and provide more dedicated servers for their Xbox Live service.

You guys must be 15 years old or something because it's really childish to ignore such obvious facts.

Xbox Live is an amazing service and the competition has to show and prove before they say they are better.

[jaren92]

Agreed to the fullest

[hankmoody]

Bubble. For you.

[eman3d]

PS Plus let's you borrow 'free' games, they do not belong to you. If you no longer pay for PS Plus you lose every free game, they allow you to have those games as long as you pay for PS Plus... stop ignoring the truth.

As far as Xbox Live's free games- they belong to you! If you stop paying for Gold membership you can still play the free games they give out each month.

[BlaqMagiq24]

Yes you get free games up until the release of the Xbox One. Yet the Instant Game Collection will keep going long after the PS4 is released. Therefore Xbox Live Gold will lose value while PS Plus maintains its value.

And that's the truth.

[mhunterjr]

Considering Microsoft's track record for reliability in this space, Sony's issues, and the fact that Microsoft is managing their own infrastructure, it's hard to pick against them in terms of reliability...

There's really no reason to think Sony would beat MS at this part of the game any time soon.

[_FantasmA_]

You can't use PS3 vs 360 online because PS Plus was optional whereas Live was pretty much required. Next gen both will be required to play online, but only one will actually give you something for your money back likes its been doing for years on the PS3.

[Jmanzare]

If you can buy a 400-500 dollar console plus the cost of games you shouldn't have a problem with spending 50-60 dollars a year to play online. People just need something to complain about