Xbox Live Gold - 10 Dollar Increase Effective

[Karou Ariyen]

Anyone else think that XBL has nothing worth paying 60/year?

[Tivia]

I have ranted about the Live Sub rate for years. It is why I cancelled mine and refuse to reactivate it. There is nothing that it offers for the money that I can't get on another system free. The only reason anyone even pays for it is because they have no choice in order to play online. I guarantee the moment online play became free on the 360 90% of all the Live subs would be instantly cancelled.

[Sugami]

What? Why would people cancel if it turns free? If anything more people would sign up.

Microsoft provides a service, it's not unreasonable to expect to pay for said service. The reason the fee has gone up is because of inflation. Whether you think the service is worth that much is up to you. I think Microsoft provides a very good service with Live, £40 a year isn't all that bad.

[Karou Ariyen]

What? Why would people cancel if it turns free? If anything more people would sign up.

Microsoft provides a service, it's not unreasonable to expect to pay for said service. The reason the fee has gone up is because of inflation. Whether you think the service is worth that much is up to you. I think Microsoft provides a very good service with Live, £40 a year isn't all that bad.

Yeah..... but they upped my price when I had 3 months left on my subscription and they said "We'll let you re-up now for an additional 12 months at the original price." Which they didn't. Instead of the old price they charged me the new price. I had to fight them to get it removed. My protest is to stay a silver member. Nothing's worth their insanity. By the way, No one needs an xbox to log into twit-facebook.

[Tivia]

What? Why would people cancel if it turns free? If anything more people would sign up.

Microsoft provides a service, it's not unreasonable to expect to pay for said service. The reason the fee has gone up is because of inflation. Whether you think the service is worth that much is up to you. I think Microsoft provides a very good service with Live, £40 a year isn't all that bad.

I was referring to the paid sub, the only reason anyone pays for gold is for online play. Move online play to silver and just about every single gold would be cancelled.

It is unreasonable because you are being forced to pay for a service offered by everyone else for free. I play online with my ps3, wii and PC all for free. I access Netflix on my ps3, wii and pc and my TV free. The only reason MS forces online play to remain in gold is because they darn well know the rest of the garbage offered as part of Live gold no one would pay for.

[Alya Mizar (Tsybil)]

I have been looking for a something to access the web for TV.

Its pretty much come down to the PS3. X box live gold is a big part of the reason for the decision.

It isn't that Microsquish is offering a service, its that a lot of things that others offer for free is forced through the PAID Gold subscriptions.

Not being a platform gamer, I have no reason to use any X box service.

[Sugami]

I was referring to the paid sub, the only reason anyone pays for gold is for online play. Move online play to silver and just about every single gold would be cancelled.

It is unreasonable because you are being forced to pay for a service offered by everyone else for free. I play online with my ps3, wii and PC all for free. I access Netflix on my ps3, wii and pc and my TV free. The only reason MS forces online play to remain in gold is because they darn well know the rest of the garbage offered as part of Live gold no one would pay for.

I think Gold would just become free and Silver would stop or rather they'd scrap that naming system and it'd just be covered under XBL. As for the "rest of the garbage" there is none, the only difference between Gold and Silver is Gold allows you to play games online.

No, it is perfectly reasonable to be expected to pay for a service, just because someone isn't charging for a similar service doesn't mean someone else should also not charge. Microsoft is a business, not a charity. And no you don't play online on your PC for free, you have to pay your Internet Service Provider a fee of some sort to use their service. You don't complain about paying for MMOs so why complain about paying for XBL? They both provide services, money is needed to keep them going.

I have been looking for a something to access the web for TV.

You could just connect a laptop to the TV like I do

[Shirai]

No, it is perfectly reasonable to be expected to pay for a service, just because someone isn't charging for a similar service doesn't mean someone else should also not charge. Microsoft is a business, not a charity. And no you don't play online on your PC for free, you have to pay your Internet Service Provider a fee of some sort to use their service. You don't complain about paying for MMOs so why complain about paying for XBL? They both provide services, money is needed to keep them going.

To play FFXI on PS2/3 and PC for example only requires the fees for said ISP and the game itself, where the 360 version also requires you to subscribe to their Gold service to be able to play it on top of previously mentioned fees.
XBL, like all other online appliances needs an ISP to run, XBL does not bring their own internet service along so you are required to pay extra to play online on their platform while other platforms offer the exact same service without charging aditional cost.

Point being, yes we are very willing to pay extra for a service, but not when another platform offers the exact same service and content without additional fees.

[Tivia]

As Shirai pointed out, your example is sort of flawed Sugami. The 360 requires that same internet connection so again, what precisely are they providing?

Here is a handy chart provided by MS that shows the level of screwing you are getting
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/joinlive

The differences in order

1) Online play - offered free on every single other platform, again if this option were in silver I doubt many if any would pay for gold. This is the entire point in that they are holding gamers hostage to a paid service that is free everywhere else.

2) Netflix - offered freely everywhere else outside netflix's sub fees which 360 owners also pay.

3) Live sports from ESPN - Free on the web but either way this justifies a cost due to it being premium content. However if it were its own separate package how many do you actually thing would pay for it? Likewise how many current gold subscribers actually care about it? I doubt many.

4) Video kinect, facebook, twitter - Do I really need to explain the absurdity of this particular bullet point?

5) Personalized music from zune and live.fm - again..see point 4.

So lets boil it back to the original point. You are paying $60 per year for your machine to be "Allowed the privledge" of accessing multiplayer games that may or may not have their own subscription fee. If they do bear in mind that $60 sub will net you no discount it is simply a fee on top. Also bear in mind that players on other systems are getting the Exact Same Multiplayer Experience without paying a $60 per year gate keeper fee. Do you really want to continue defending this?

[Karou Ariyen]

Completely agree. They offer nothing worth 60 bucks that you can't get elsewhere. my friends have netflix on their Wii which they get for free + netflix sub fee. But lets focus on the one aspect of 360 that they don't offer me that I would pay 60 bucks for:

AN eBAY APPLICATION

To be able to control and monitor my auctions on my 360 would be awesome. But I already have an eBay application on my blackberry. I get SMS, IM and Email alerts. So that shoots the 360 version that I want out the window. Now we're back to square 1 where I keep wondering "When is microsoft going to figure this crap out?!"

[Alya Mizar (Tsybil)]

I have been looking for a something to access the web for TV.

You could just connect a laptop to the TV like I do

Had I a laptop it would travel with me. Also a blu-ray equipped laptop costs more than several used PS3s. I could build a PC for the job I suppose.

[Karou Ariyen]

I have been looking for a something to access the web for TV.

You could just connect a laptop to the TV like I do

Had I a laptop it would travel with me. Also a blu-ray equipped laptop costs more than several used PS3s. I could build a PC for the job I suppose.

Yes but if you buy a blue-ray equipped laptop....you get a bluray player that's not a brick.

[Kennocha]

Sony just announced that they are going to have a new tier that is ~$10/mo called PSN+.

News was shortly after a review showing Sony losing tons of money on the network. Running a network of the size of these things is not cheap.

[Shirai]

I've been browsing the PSN site for the news.

All I read is that they indeed have Playstation Plus which does offer quite a lot like extra game content and mini-games which non-subscribers don't get or will have to pay for seperately.
But online gaming itself is said to stay a free service.

[Tivia]

Right, we have known about PSN for quite a long time now. The difference being is that PSN sells extras for that subscription fee. I know when I got lucky enough to demo it, there was quite a bit of the $4-$10 games that were free as long as the sub was active, as well as a ton of other additional stuff. While nothing in particular made me subscribe it is still an example of the system done right. I can still actually use my PS3 to play both online and offline as well as things like netflix without paying for the sub. Unlike my 360 which is forced to be a single player offline box unless I cough up the fee.

Oh and that makes 1000 posts - wow I am slacking on this site, I have over 9k in the same period of time on my other site.

[Karou Ariyen]

Sony just announced that they are going to have a new tier that is ~$10/mo called PSN+.

News was shortly after a review showing Sony losing tons of money on the network. Running a network of the size of these things is not cheap.

People Play on PlayStation? When did this happen?

Author's Notice: The Posting Author would like to state that when this was posted she was promptly beaten to death by a rather large pillow by the ps3 owner in the house.

[Tivia]

Sony just announced that they are going to have a new tier that is ~$10/mo called PSN+.

News was shortly after a review showing Sony losing tons of money on the network. Running a network of the size of these things is not cheap.

People Play on PlayStation? When did this happen?

Author's Notice: The Posting Author would like to state that when this was posted she was promptly beaten to death by a rather large pillow by the ps3 owner in the house.

Laugh, it does seem that way sometimes..then there are days where it is so full it is hard to get a non jammed game.

That said, Standard convo between a friend of mine and me:

Him: Dude, load up x game and lets rock some people.
me: ok, firing up...wtf man you aren't even online?
Him: I am on the 360, of course I am online!
me: Gdamnit, wtf you know I don't have a gold account and why the F did you buy that game for the shitbox?
Him: I dunno, habit?
me: jfc, go exchange it already..god.
Him: Fine fine...be back in 30.
30 min later...
Him: ok got it lets go.
me: Meh, already played some games kinda tired now.
Him: ......................................I am driving to your house to kill you now.

[Karou Ariyen]

Legs...broken....bones mangled.....stuffing knocked out of.....Lolps3 *Bedsheet Headshot*