Buh, oops.

Anyway, I look at it this way, if you find value in paying for Live, that's great. Lots of people do! If you play online very often, even if you ignore the fact that it's free everywhere else, the cost is probably not a huge deal. A $10 a year increase might not change that for a lot of those people.

The problem is that their DIRECT console competition, in PSN, has mostly caught up.. and it's still free.. and you can be damned sure that Sony is going to keep adding to their service. If Sony hadn't launched their console and their online system on such a spectacular misfire, I'd be willing to bet that Live Gold would be far more desolate. In terms of keeping people paying $50 a year for online gaming, Microsoft got lucky that Sony cratered themselves at launch.

So we are not going in circles here, what are we discussing?

- Microsoft hasn't increased the price of Xbox Live in 5 years. i.e. during the Xbox 360 lifetime.
- Every year they have added new features, some more useful than others for different people.
- There are still features that haven't been 100% matched by PSN
- They have spent a good amount of money in infrastructure all these years.

You forgot to include the Premium mention in this part. I doubt there'll be (m)any improvements to the free portion.

I really don't use XBox Live for Online gaming. I use it for Netflix Instant Watch, Downloading new rosters, updates to my sports games and occassionally dowloading videos off Zune. Even for $60 a year, I still think that's worth it. Don't really care about the new ESPN feature, hell if I want to watch it, I just have to switch on my Directv and it's on 24/7. I'm only paid until 2011 (through the $34.99 card that this thread helped me find), so if there are more deals out there for the cards, then great. If not, I'll suck it up and pay the $60.

Although I'll be sure to ask here 1st about any deals.

Maybe.

But what most people claim to pay for with Xbox Live Gold (the ability to play games online) is still free there. Nobody has Xbox Live Gold to get the Xbox 360 version of Netflix, FaceBook and Twitter. With PSN/PSN+, you have the OPTION to pay for their premium service, which actually adds something that could be considered a premium, not just a slew of things that are free everywhere else. If you wanted to jump on the PS3 once every two months to just play a game online, you're not burdened with a yearly fee (or $10 to pay just for the one month).

djaria begs to differ.

Son of a bitch!

DJariya, you do know of those features, the only one your $60 a year fee covers is Netflix, right?

Everything else is free for Silver members.

Yeah I know....I never said I don't use the online gaming at all. I know that's the main point of having Gold in the 1st place. I do once in a while. But, I absolutely use the Netflix feature and IMO it's worth it just to have that ability with my XBox.

Edit: I also use Last.fm which is also part of Gold. I like to have some music on as background noise while on the computer.

You can get last.fm on your computer too!

I like the interface on the Xbox with the floating pictures, especially my favorite female artists. I know most of you guys exclusively use it for online gaming and that's cool.

I'm good thru 2012

Well sure, you usually do. But doesn't it take longer than that if the guy wants to cuddle afterwards?

Without knowing the infrastructure of MS servers, it's hard to say regarding B and C. B really depends on whether $50 per user in itself covers the cost of maintaining whatever servers XBox Live runs off of. Cost per user might go down just as far as connectivity to the same servers, but if necessary expansion can also involve additional rack or data center space, increased bandwidth, or new sites entirely.

And for C, while computing power goes up, upgrade costs can be considerable if you're replacing 5 year old hardware with the latest and greatest, not to mention all the man hours required in doing such a migration.

EDIT: Not that i'm in agreement for the price increase, I think it should have been a decrease

If I let that happen, you better believe I would charge enough to pay for everyone's account here!

Quoted for future reference. With a handy tag in case the thread ever pops up in Otter!
#piñataowesmeLive

Didn't they already say that no new features would be coming to the free PSN service? I seem to remember hearing that in interviews and things when it was announced but I could be misremembering the source (and it was instead an opinion piece ).

More new controller rumors?

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/08/30/ru...with-improved/

It NEVER fails. I just finally bought a fourth Xbox controller and got it yesterday.

i havent been paying close attention.. has there been any news on a timeframe for espn3 on 360 release?

This is fucking horseshit that it wasn't included with the new Sexbox.

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I really want to test it out, but there's no way I'd pay $65 for it.

Eff that. I don't use the D-pad enough to spend $65 on that.

Is hulu coming out for Xbox this fall? I did a google search but could not find any good info.

When the announced it original they said it would be next year for the 360.

+1

I don't have a use for a 'better' D-pad but I do like the color scheme and the lack of rainbow buttons.

I liked the color buttons $65 for a controller is way too steep. I don't want a play and charge kit!

It's sweet lookin' but I also like the colored buttons.