It'd kind of remove the whole selling point of Gold, wouldn't it? At least for me.

Agree with Mr. Pugsley. M$ has shown that users are willing to pay. SONY and Nintendo will in some form follow suit eventually.

"he told me to not worry cause Microsoft's "secret weapon strategy" is to allow online play for all Silver members and make Gold a premium package with extra features"



...your friend is clueless...

$700,000,000.00!

That is what MS earns per year due to Xbox Live fees.

That should answer your question.

yeah... i'm not gonna renew my gold subscription... not enough games I enjoy playing online on consoles (it's mainly FPS and... well I prefer PC).

"HAHAHAHA ..... NO, were talkin about microsoft here all they want is money."

If you owned a company you would want to make money also. They aren't a charity

Doubt it. They really should open up some of the other Gold "premium" services though. Netflix in particular, since you already have to pay separately for that anyway...

If all the console manufacturers switch to paid online gaming (as some people are suggesting here), that greatly increases the probability that I never buy another console again.

Blur says hi.

Nintendo won't do it, Iwata's even spoken out against time based fee models.

They could charge in other ways, but they'll never do a weekly/monthly/annual fee for service.