You get what you pay for. I know on Xbox Live all my games will have near flawless online performance because Microsoft hosts all the servers used for matchmaking and all the logic on their end for both First Party and Third Party games. The only time MS doesn't host the servers is for dedicated server games, but even then MS hosts the matchmaking and skill tracking services.

Just take any CoD in the last 4 years as an example. Play on Xbox Live and have relatively little lag, few disconnects or other network issues. Play on PSN and have every other game be incredibly laggy and disconnects everywhere. Not to mention the competitive/team play is very lacking on PSN since most people do not use microphones.

Xbox Live is like the MLG of online services. People pay for it because it is superior in performance to any of the competitors. Microsoft will keep adding value to it. That I have no doubt. I just hope it isn't in the form of some discount program and the occasional free game that I don't have time to play with all my other games I have to begin with. That being said, I still have gotten about 4-5 free games from Xbox Live over the years and several discounts/free points via their rewards program... haha sooo...

Red Dead Redemption is competitive. It has large amounts of people. Everytime I play it, I meet a new, competitive player. 

Find the online count and then compare it to games like Halo, call of duty, and battlefield. 

And regardless you know what I'm trying to say.  I think you just want to say something to me :P  PSN does not have as many multiplayer games that are good compared to ones on XBL.  What sony has tried making on multiplayer has mostly failed. KZ2 did decent though.  Then the 3rd went backwards.

lower energy consumption

the real question is who pays full price? It took me literally 30 seconds of searching to find it for 33% off. Hell, whenever I log into Live as a silver there is a big ad there for a nice discount :3

You could have at least tried to respond to the question.The thread is obviously talking about ways to make it valueable to people who don't think it's valuable. By saying, "If you don't value it, go away." you already acknowledge that some people don't value it. You could have at least tried to give some examples that would make those people value XBL. By saying "don't pay for it", you show that you really don't care for the point behind the thread.

Who, indeed? *looks around nervously*.....that's just....that's just crazy!

I don't know what you are saying. Why should I have to go research and compare online count? What does that have to do with my gaming?

It wouldn't matter if Call of Duty had 1 billion concurrent players and Red Dead Redepmtion only had 1 thousand concurrent players. I can only play with alimited amount of players at a time. And if a game has enough players so I can play with someone different player every time, why should I, as a gamer, care if it gets more gamers? 

It's not like I'm going to compete against all the millions of players in Call of Duty. No, I can only play against a limited amount of people. And if a game manages to make my experience different enough everytime, then it's large enough. 

Having millions of gamers is great for the game and developers, but if I I'm not going to play against all of them, then how does that improve my gaming experience at all?

You know what, don't worry about it.  You are missing my point entirely and you continue to always want to start and argument. Later

I was kinda looking forward to a battle to see who was the greatest Jay# guy.  You two WILL collide someday and when you do, I'll be there to watch it.