That sucks. You have my condolences. We've had a few drives in the house, all of which have been rock solid, quiet, decent performers. But it's a pretty small sample size I guess.
Interestingly, rugby is technically 'rugby football' and a player with good skills is known as a 'good footballer.' To be fair, the feet are the only means of moving the ball forwards, so it's a quite appropriate name.
Emulators are not perfect. To perfectly emulated complex hardware is quite difficult. I imagine there are come concerns from Microsoft that it could lead to lower quality games for the 360, or less incentive for developers to make proper 360 games. And if the emulator was a late addition tot he 360 there may not have been time to turn it into a properly documented API for developers.
An API would possibly have been nice for consumers, but I can understand Microsoft's decision to not do it.
This is a strange. I find myself defending Microsoft more than Apple these days, despite being a proud Mac owner. Bizarre.
The trouble is that games do have low level optimisations that aren't trivial to port. And then there's the shader programs that would have to be rewritten for the different GPU.
Even going from Power Mac to Intel Mac isn't trivial for complex programs. It's more then just a recompile for high-perfromance programs, particularly if they address hardware directly.
This is what is puzzling me, wouldn't it be rather trivial to allow developers to compile their newly released games for XBox360 as well and then just ship both binaries on the same DVD, so that the game could run on XBox as well as XBox360 out of the box?
It's far from trivial. Different CPU and different GPU. It's like porting a Windows game to run on a Power Mac. Except harder, because there is bound to more low-level code-tweaking going on to optimise performance. Ports often take a few months and a fair bit of money.
Actually, I suppose developing for PS2 and Xbox would be a better comparison. It's more than just a recompile to get it working on both consoles.
The HD was a Maxtor drive.. take that to mean whatever you want, but I personally also avoid Maxtor these days.
LaCie all the way for me. Quality drives, nice enclosures and quiet operation. Perfect for the discerning Mac fan.
The DVD settlement was not in the form of a gift certificate for the Apple store or anything like this.
That does suck. You have my condolences. I often take issue with class action suits, but if a company is found guilty, then they should be made to pay in cash, not in vouchers, the cost of which they can largely recoup.
You are technically correct in saying that OS X ran on the imac. But I would say that crawl is far more appropriate. The early versions of OS X were not the most responsive, as I am sure you are aware. It was terrible on my computer even after maxing the ram out.
Up until Christmas I was running X.4 on my iBook. It was a 500 MHz G3 with an 8 MB graphics card, 66MHz system bus and 384 MB RAM. I guess I got used to the slowness after a while (though it was very exciting if I ever booted into 9 - all that speed), but found it quite usable if I didn't play intensive games (not that I could play anything more advanced than the original Ghost Recon with that graphics card) or try to do a lot in Photoshop. And 10.4 felt a fair bit faster than 10.1.5 had. Then again, the iBooks got better support than those old iMacs.
As for the fahrenheit thing, I completely retract that conversion. Yes I just typed it into google and went with it. Stupid mistake.. I found 68 degrees a bit surprising at the time
I put the numbers into Google to check that I had my maths right and was momentarily confused. They should probably stick in some sort of note for temperature conversions. Only common unit conversion I can think of that would have the problem.
That's the thing about spellcheckers. You spell something wrong and they won't pick up on it because it's a real word, just not the one you were thinking of. Serves me right for being a spelling nazi.
01) It's spelt 'moron' 10) He got to 2. Look up 'binary.' 11) He was quite funny, not so much for the content (unoriginal), but for the listing system. Nice touch.
Sounds more like a problem with the HD supplier, than with Apple.
The monitor had some weird thing where it would flicker and vibrate a lot.
That would be annoying, I'd imagine.
I was compensated through a class action lawsuit against Apple because the DVD player didn't actually work. For this, I got "special deals" on Apple merchandise including like 80 dollars for 64MB of ram or something ridiculous.
Wouldn't it have been x dollars to spend in the Apple Store? I doubt it would be restricted to the RAM. You could have easily used it on the more reasonably priced items in the store.
OS X came out shortly after that and I was thoroughly pissed that my computer was rendered virtually unusable after 1 OS upgrade cycle.
Your computer doesn't suddenly become less usable after a new OS comes out. The machine isn't physically affected and all the software that worked on it before would continue to work today. And iMacs could run OS X. We've got some from that era running it. They're not speed demons, but things rarely get faster when you upgrade to a new OS. It's certainly not a Q&A problem.
It's a difference of 20 degrees CELSIUS. That's 68 degrees Fahrenheit!
Actually, it's 36 Fahrenheit. I'm guessing you plugged the Celsius figure into Google or some other conversion program? Remember that Celsius and Fahreheit don't have the same zero point, so converting 20C to F is not the smae as converting a temperature delta of 20C into a temperature delta in F.
Still a pretty bad mistake by Apple. Someone really dropped the ball on that one.
That's a very blanket statement with no context and no meaning, which I never made. What I did say was:
Xbox Live supports many more games.
However my next statement was not 'therefore they need more servers than an MMO,' as you have tried to claim. It was in fact:
Running servers for all of them would be vastly more expensive.
Hmm, nothing there about needing 'more servers,''more servers than an MMO,' or 'more servers than WoW.' In fact all I've said is that running servers for a lot of games would cost more than $50 a year, as I explained in my previous post, which you quoted from. Did you bother to read it?
All of this can fairly trivially be discerned from the very quotes that you selected, so would you care to explain I'm shifting my argument around?
Oh and you've continued to completely ignore the various points I made:
Updates cost money to produce, but are free to download.
New content costs money to produce and distribute, but sometimes is free.
Game demos cost money to produce and distribute, but are free.
Movie trailers cost money to produce and distribute, but are free.
Customisation content costs money to produce and distribute, but are free.
Messaging and voice chat requires storage space and bandwidth to transmit, but is free.
Maintenance for servers and applications running this all costs money.
R&D to improve the Live experience costs money.
Advertising to promote Live costs money.
Billing and support staff need paid.
The Microsoft games division is losing money and needs to make it back somewhere.
You see, even if your argument at the top held water (which it doesn't, since it's a strawman attack), there would still be all these points backing me up.
Matchmaking and IMs don't use any amount of bandwidth that would justify paying for it
It costs money for bandwidth, servers, maintenance and R&D and the gamin division is making a loss, so Microsoft has to make money from somewhere.
and new content isn't generally free
Sometimes it is. And things like demos and trailers are, IIRC.
The XBoxs are the only consoles you have to pay to play online for
Online support on other consoles is very poor compared to Live. None of them offer a comparable service.
.. There are only a handful of pay to play games outside of the XBox world.
But there each game is doing it's own thing. Live is a unified service with features you wouldn't get if each developer and publisher worked by themselves.
To be honest, it amazes me that paying $15 a month to play a single MMORPG is seen as acceptable, while $50 a year to play many games online with a unified service is seen as extortionate. I would love Live to be free, but I accept that it costs money for Microsoft to run, their game division is losing money and it's actually a good service, so I'm happy to pay for it.
The problem here is that I figured you were smart enough to deduce what my argument was, so I didn't explicitly state it. This was a mistake. You obviously didn't understand my main point.
1) Ad homenin. Attack the point, not the debater.
2) I understood, but found ti full of logical fallacies.
All the examples I gave were reasons why a service like Live costs much less to run than an MMO
3) Strawman attack. I never compared Live to generic MMOs
4) I never claimed Live costs as much as an MMO or even WoW to run. I suspect there may be some understanding here. I wasn't claiming it would cost vastly more than WoW to run servers for all games. I was claiming that it would cost more than $50 a year to run the servers, citing WoW as an example of how hard it is to maintain a reliable popular service for a greater cost.
Your claim that more games == more servers needed is flawed
Where exactly did I make that claim? I said that Live supports more than one game, but I didn't say it needs more servers than a single MMO. My point was that it supports sufficient games to bring the server traffic up to a level where running all the servers gets expensive. More expensive than hosting servers for just Halo 2. More expensive than $50 a year.
The first is that you used an anecdote for the "single game" side of your equation.
You're still beating away at that strawman.
WoW is not all MMOs, and all MMOs are not WoW. The fact that MMO X is experiencing server difficulties does not mean that all MMOs have trouble with server loads.
Nice facts, but totally irrelevant since I never claimed WoW is all MMOs, all MMOs are WoW or that all MMOs have trouble with server loads.
The second reason your argument is flawed is that you fail to take into account the fundamental differences between the two things you are comparing. It's making a comparison between two completely different animals.
You're a little fixated on WoW. Did you bother to read the rest of my post? My point about WoW is that it's hard to reiably maintain a popular service, even with more than $50 coming in. I then made many other points, explaining why Live cost a fair bit of money to run and used enough bandwidth to justify charging for. You've ignored those points and attacked an imaginary argument. If you have any interest in reasoned debate, address those points.
Taking these things into consideration
You haven't taken into account anything I said.
claiming that "more games offered == more server power needed" is absurd.
Putting quote marks round something doesn't magically mean I said it, or provide any context. If you understand my claims, then try addressing them rather than what you would like them to be.
MS isn't using up any appreciable bandwidth since users host the games.
Matchmaking requires bandwidth, as does transferring messages and downloading updates and new (free) content. Arcade games and new (non-free) content also requires bandwidth, but people pay for that already. I'm guessing trailers and demos are free as well and they certainly use a fair bit of bandwidth.
Microsoft may be "perfectly entitled to try and urn a profit[sic]"
It should have been 'turn,' in case you were wondering, rather than 'earn,' though it is amusing that it could be either.
but it's still a scam
Where do Microsoft lie or attempt to defraud their customers? If they're not, then there's no scam. People have the facts and make a choice about whether to use Live or not, or even whether to get a 360 or not. No-one is being scammed. Just because something is more expensive than you like, or even than you think it could be, doesn't make it immoral and certainly doesn't make it a scam. Microsoft are a business, not a charity, especially when it comes to their games division, which is making a loss. Turning Live from a revenue source into another expense would be a terrible business decision unless it resulted in a massive increase in the number of games being bought in order to make up for it.
because almost all developers would let you to play online for free if Microsoft would allow them to.
That doesn't make it a scam and it's pure speculation. Even if they did, it doesn't make what Microsoft is doing immoral. Having everyone running their own servers would probably result in a worse service as well.
I don't think I'm entitled to anything from MS, I simply won't pay their online tariff.
Given that you think them charging for Live is a scam, it certainly comes across as you thinking you're entitled to play online for free.
live would make the connections and aggregate the scores, the game servers would be run by the game publishers just like with PC games.
Then you'd lose the unified feel of Live, the ability to communicate between games and face the possibility of publishers closing servers after a while. You'd quite possibly be looking at multiple user ids being required, making it harder to ban cheats.
also allow dedicated and non-dedicated user servers but mark them as user server.
We've got user servers already:^) It's possible that that could end up slitting the player base. Not a problem for big games, but potentially for smaller ones.
That would only work if the publishers paid Microsoft a fee for making their games Xbox Live capable. And even then, it's still a one-off payment, and not a very big one at that. Games would either have to be made a bit more expensive for having Live or else the developers and publishers, having spent money on adding support for Live, would have to put up with reduced profit margins and hope that extra volume makes up for it.
Honestly, maybe they might use all that extra wasted processing power to implement a bluff detector in the game based on biometric feedback from the camera.
Maybe you'd like to tell them how to write a program like that.
Come on! I mean, a freakin card game is the biggest thing Xbox360 will offer for a camera accessory?
You can see the future and know this is the biggest thing they will offer? My, I am impressed.
Why? Because you have some sort of constitutional right to play online? Because it's not fair for a company to try and make some money? Because you have some magic way of making bandwidth and servers free? Please enlighten us all.
and the main reason I don't have XB
You're too cheap to pay $50a year?
was under the impression that the reason you had to pay to play online games on the XBox was because MS had to pay for it's server network.
They have servers to run, bandwidth to pay for, admin and support staff to pay, money to make back on the Xbox and 360 since they were sold at a loss and they're perfectly entitled to try and urn a profit even if this wasn't the case.
If all their servers are doing is matching people up to play games
They match people up, maintain and provide statistics and rankings, store and transmit messages between players, provide additional content, etc.
then it's quite a scam.
Because you deserve everything for free? Because Microsoft have lied to their customers about it? Because the fee if prohibitively expensive? Well none of those reasons are true, so I'm struggling to see what it is that leads you to believe that it's a scam.
Actually, it's a yearly fee, equivalent to the price of one game. But that;s a minor point.
for what is included in the price of other games.
But this covers more than one game. And is subsidises the free services availble on Live, as well as helping Microsoft make back money on hardware sold at a loss. How exactly do you expect them to make money i they run Live at a loss as well?
As much as I dislike Steam, XBOX Live seems a much greater customer ripoff.
In what way? They're honest about what you're getting, it's a service that works very well, and it's very cheap while providing online capability for a lot of games.
It's quite obvious, surely, that running servers comes money. People should be grateful that any companies provide servers for free, rather than throwing a tantrum when some don't. Given that Microsoft were losing money on the Xbox hardware, it's quite reasonable to expect that they try to make it back some other way. It's not as if it was an exorbitant fee.
A single shard of an MMO has thousands of people playing on it. A game on Live has, at most, a few dozen.
But, as I pointed out, there are a great many games that run on live. You're paying for online capability for all of them. If you had to pay for each game, that would be ridiculous. But you don't.
An MMO has to have servers up and waiting at ALL times. Live servers can queue up a new server thread when demand spikes, and scale back the same way.
If people have to wait more than a minute for a game, they get quite annoyed. What leads you to think that the Liv servers aren't up al the time, directing matchmaking, etc?
Then take into consideration the fact that most console games don't offer much new content after they are released. MMOs add lots of things after release.
That's very much dependnt on the game. And Xbox Live offers plenty of other content - demos, movie trailers, customisation for your 360, arcade games, etc.
You specifically mention how WoW has difficulty supporting the load. This is a bullshit point, because it is an anecdote.
You don't seriously believe this do you?
Not all MMOs have difficulty supporting similar loads.
Actually, this is the logical fallacy here. It's what is known as a strawman argument. I never claimed all MMOs have trouble. All I mentioned is WoW.
Of course you conveniently miss out the part where your money gains you the privilege of playing online against other people. How exactly is that 'getting nothing in return?'
If you want to bookmark mp3s, go into iTunes, select one or more tracks, get info, go to options tab and check the 'Remember playback position' box. You can now bookmark the track(s).
Look at WoW. People pay significantly more than $50 a year, but the dedicated servers for it have a great deal of difficulty supporting the load. Xbox Live supports many more games. Running servers for all of them would be vastly more expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
That sucks. You have my condolences. We've had a few drives in the house, all of which have been rock solid, quiet, decent performers. But it's a pretty small sample size I guess.
Didn't realise they were using Seagates.
Interestingly, rugby is technically 'rugby football' and a player with good skills is known as a 'good footballer.' To be fair, the feet are the only means of moving the ball forwards, so it's a quite appropriate name.
Emulators are not perfect. To perfectly emulated complex hardware is quite difficult. I imagine there are come concerns from Microsoft that it could lead to lower quality games for the 360, or less incentive for developers to make proper 360 games. And if the emulator was a late addition tot he 360 there may not have been time to turn it into a properly documented API for developers.
An API would possibly have been nice for consumers, but I can understand Microsoft's decision to not do it.
This is a strange. I find myself defending Microsoft more than Apple these days, despite being a proud Mac owner. Bizarre.
The trouble is that games do have low level optimisations that aren't trivial to port. And then there's the shader programs that would have to be rewritten for the different GPU.
Even going from Power Mac to Intel Mac isn't trivial for complex programs. It's more then just a recompile for high-perfromance programs, particularly if they address hardware directly.
It's far from trivial. Different CPU and different GPU. It's like porting a Windows game to run on a Power Mac. Except harder, because there is bound to more low-level code-tweaking going on to optimise performance. Ports often take a few months and a fair bit of money.
Actually, I suppose developing for PS2 and Xbox would be a better comparison. It's more than just a recompile to get it working on both consoles.
LaCie all the way for me. Quality drives, nice enclosures and quiet operation. Perfect for the discerning Mac fan.
That does suck. You have my condolences. I often take issue with class action suits, but if a company is found guilty, then they should be made to pay in cash, not in vouchers, the cost of which they can largely recoup.
Up until Christmas I was running X.4 on my iBook. It was a 500 MHz G3 with an 8 MB graphics card, 66MHz system bus and 384 MB RAM. I guess I got used to the slowness after a while (though it was very exciting if I ever booted into 9 - all that speed), but found it quite usable if I didn't play intensive games (not that I could play anything more advanced than the original Ghost Recon with that graphics card) or try to do a lot in Photoshop. And 10.4 felt a fair bit faster than 10.1.5 had. Then again, the iBooks got better support than those old iMacs.
I put the numbers into Google to check that I had my maths right and was momentarily confused. They should probably stick in some sort of note for temperature conversions. Only common unit conversion I can think of that would have the problem.
Interesting. Not so well known this side of the pond. Thanks for the correction.
That's the thing about spellcheckers. You spell something wrong and they won't pick up on it because it's a real word, just not the one you were thinking of. Serves me right for being a spelling nazi.
Actually, the joke flew over his head, as I was pointing out.
01) It's spelt 'moron'
10) He got to 2. Look up 'binary.'
11) He was quite funny, not so much for the content (unoriginal), but for the listing system. Nice touch.
Sounds more like a problem with the HD supplier, than with Apple.
That would be annoying, I'd imagine.
Wouldn't it have been x dollars to spend in the Apple Store? I doubt it would be restricted to the RAM. You could have easily used it on the more reasonably priced items in the store.
Your computer doesn't suddenly become less usable after a new OS comes out. The machine isn't physically affected and all the software that worked on it before would continue to work today. And iMacs could run OS X. We've got some from that era running it. They're not speed demons, but things rarely get faster when you upgrade to a new OS. It's certainly not a Q&A problem.
Actually, it's 36 Fahrenheit. I'm guessing you plugged the Celsius figure into Google or some other conversion program? Remember that Celsius and Fahreheit don't have the same zero point, so converting 20C to F is not the smae as converting a temperature delta of 20C into a temperature delta in F.
Still a pretty bad mistake by Apple. Someone really dropped the ball on that one.
That's a very blanket statement with no context and no meaning, which I never made. What I did say was:
However my next statement was not 'therefore they need more servers than an MMO,' as you have tried to claim. It was in fact:
Hmm, nothing there about needing 'more servers,' 'more servers than an MMO,' or 'more servers than WoW.' In fact all I've said is that running servers for a lot of games would cost more than $50 a year, as I explained in my previous post, which you quoted from. Did you bother to read it?
All of this can fairly trivially be discerned from the very quotes that you selected, so would you care to explain I'm shifting my argument around?
Oh and you've continued to completely ignore the various points I made:
You see, even if your argument at the top held water (which it doesn't, since it's a strawman attack), there would still be all these points backing me up.
It costs money for bandwidth, servers, maintenance and R&D and the gamin division is making a loss, so Microsoft has to make money from somewhere.
Sometimes it is. And things like demos and trailers are, IIRC.
Online support on other consoles is very poor compared to Live. None of them offer a comparable service.
But there each game is doing it's own thing. Live is a unified service with features you wouldn't get if each developer and publisher worked by themselves.
To be honest, it amazes me that paying $15 a month to play a single MMORPG is seen as acceptable, while $50 a year to play many games online with a unified service is seen as extortionate. I would love Live to be free, but I accept that it costs money for Microsoft to run, their game division is losing money and it's actually a good service, so I'm happy to pay for it.
1) Ad homenin. Attack the point, not the debater.
2) I understood, but found ti full of logical fallacies.
3) Strawman attack. I never compared Live to generic MMOs 4) I never claimed Live costs as much as an MMO or even WoW to run. I suspect there may be some understanding here. I wasn't claiming it would cost vastly more than WoW to run servers for all games. I was claiming that it would cost more than $50 a year to run the servers, citing WoW as an example of how hard it is to maintain a reliable popular service for a greater cost.
Where exactly did I make that claim? I said that Live supports more than one game, but I didn't say it needs more servers than a single MMO. My point was that it supports sufficient games to bring the server traffic up to a level where running all the servers gets expensive. More expensive than hosting servers for just Halo 2. More expensive than $50 a year.
You're still beating away at that strawman.
Nice facts, but totally irrelevant since I never claimed WoW is all MMOs, all MMOs are WoW or that all MMOs have trouble with server loads.
You're a little fixated on WoW. Did you bother to read the rest of my post? My point about WoW is that it's hard to reiably maintain a popular service, even with more than $50 coming in. I then made many other points, explaining why Live cost a fair bit of money to run and used enough bandwidth to justify charging for. You've ignored those points and attacked an imaginary argument. If you have any interest in reasoned debate, address those points.
You haven't taken into account anything I said.
Putting quote marks round something doesn't magically mean I said it, or provide any context. If you understand my claims, then try addressing them rather than what you would like them to be.
Matchmaking requires bandwidth, as does transferring messages and downloading updates and new (free) content. Arcade games and new (non-free) content also requires bandwidth, but people pay for that already. I'm guessing trailers and demos are free as well and they certainly use a fair bit of bandwidth.
It should have been 'turn,' in case you were wondering, rather than 'earn,' though it is amusing that it could be either.
Where do Microsoft lie or attempt to defraud their customers? If they're not, then there's no scam. People have the facts and make a choice about whether to use Live or not, or even whether to get a 360 or not. No-one is being scammed. Just because something is more expensive than you like, or even than you think it could be, doesn't make it immoral and certainly doesn't make it a scam. Microsoft are a business, not a charity, especially when it comes to their games division, which is making a loss. Turning Live from a revenue source into another expense would be a terrible business decision unless it resulted in a massive increase in the number of games being bought in order to make up for it.
That doesn't make it a scam and it's pure speculation. Even if they did, it doesn't make what Microsoft is doing immoral. Having everyone running their own servers would probably result in a worse service as well.
Given that you think them charging for Live is a scam, it certainly comes across as you thinking you're entitled to play online for free.
Then you'd lose the unified feel of Live, the ability to communicate between games and face the possibility of publishers closing servers after a while. You'd quite possibly be looking at multiple user ids being required, making it harder to ban cheats.
We've got user servers already :^) It's possible that that could end up slitting the player base. Not a problem for big games, but potentially for smaller ones.
That would only work if the publishers paid Microsoft a fee for making their games Xbox Live capable. And even then, it's still a one-off payment, and not a very big one at that. Games would either have to be made a bit more expensive for having Live or else the developers and publishers, having spent money on adding support for Live, would have to put up with reduced profit margins and hope that extra volume makes up for it.
Maybe you'd like to tell them how to write a program like that.
You can see the future and know this is the biggest thing they will offer? My, I am impressed.
Why? Because you have some sort of constitutional right to play online? Because it's not fair for a company to try and make some money? Because you have some magic way of making bandwidth and servers free? Please enlighten us all.
You're too cheap to pay $50a year?
They have servers to run, bandwidth to pay for, admin and support staff to pay, money to make back on the Xbox and 360 since they were sold at a loss and they're perfectly entitled to try and urn a profit even if this wasn't the case.
They match people up, maintain and provide statistics and rankings, store and transmit messages between players, provide additional content, etc.
Because you deserve everything for free? Because Microsoft have lied to their customers about it? Because the fee if prohibitively expensive? Well none of those reasons are true, so I'm struggling to see what it is that leads you to believe that it's a scam.
Actually, it's a yearly fee, equivalent to the price of one game. But that;s a minor point.
But this covers more than one game. And is subsidises the free services availble on Live, as well as helping Microsoft make back money on hardware sold at a loss. How exactly do you expect them to make money i they run Live at a loss as well?
In what way? They're honest about what you're getting, it's a service that works very well, and it's very cheap while providing online capability for a lot of games.
But Xbox Live supports many more games, provides other content and helps Microsoft make money back on hardware sold at a loss.
It's quite obvious, surely, that running servers comes money. People should be grateful that any companies provide servers for free, rather than throwing a tantrum when some don't. Given that Microsoft were losing money on the Xbox hardware, it's quite reasonable to expect that they try to make it back some other way. It's not as if it was an exorbitant fee.
But, as I pointed out, there are a great many games that run on live. You're paying for online capability for all of them. If you had to pay for each game, that would be ridiculous. But you don't.
If people have to wait more than a minute for a game, they get quite annoyed. What leads you to think that the Liv servers aren't up al the time, directing matchmaking, etc?
That's very much dependnt on the game. And Xbox Live offers plenty of other content - demos, movie trailers, customisation for your 360, arcade games, etc.
You don't seriously believe this do you?
Actually, this is the logical fallacy here. It's what is known as a strawman argument. I never claimed all MMOs have trouble. All I mentioned is WoW.
Of course you conveniently miss out the part where your money gains you the privilege of playing online against other people. How exactly is that 'getting nothing in return?'
If you want to bookmark mp3s, go into iTunes, select one or more tracks, get info, go to options tab and check the 'Remember playback position' box. You can now bookmark the track(s).
Hope that helps.
Look at WoW. People pay significantly more than $50 a year, but the dedicated servers for it have a great deal of difficulty supporting the load. Xbox Live supports many more games. Running servers for all of them would be vastly more expensive.