That seems to be what most of the people complaining about Live are actually talking about. There's been some of the usual nonsense from both sides as this argument always has in these threads, but I think Hynad and pezus' arguments are quite relevant.I also doubt that Sony or Nintendo will add a subscription model to their networks.

I actually think that in the not to distant future that the subscription model MS use for Live will start to seem archaic. A lot of online games, especially MMOs, are going F2P and gaining revenue through alternative routes to the subscription model. In emerging and Eastern markets this is doubly true so if MS wants to compete in these markets they'll need to be more flexible in the way they charge customers and collect revenue.

Oh yeah, we're saying practically the same thing. He said deal with it and I said that Halo is worth the price of XBLG. Yeah, you nailed it. Same thing.

Sheesh ಠ_ಠ

So 6 millon saps went to xbox live .i used live at the same time as psn and as for gameing its the same on both,.

You actually just validated his comparison. "Every network has to charge in order to make money." Guess what. Xbox Live, PSN, Steam, etc are networks, networks and services. Steam doesn't charge because they make all their money selling games. PSN charges with PS+ because they realized they lost way too much money with a completely free service. Xbox Live charges because they know you need the income and can use that to make the best services/network available.

His comparison works because there are extremely cheap or even free alternatives to using a phone/cell phone network. :)

Well. Steam is a little different.
Valve has *some* servers which gives data to users, but a massive bulk of it is provided by internet providers that have their own CDN (Content Delivery Network) as it works out cheaper for internet providers to have that data already on it's network rather than retreiving it directly from Valve and hence using up costly bandwidth.
A good example of this is in Australia where pretty much every ISP has some servers for Steam data and all ISP's have peering arrangements over PIPE or WAIX or Internode CDN etc' where they can use each others Steam hosted data to deliver it to users cheaply, ultimatly saving a bucketload of cash.

Microsoft however uses Akamai for it's content delivery system, which generally isn't the cheapest alternative around, but they're large and is world-wide, hence why Microsoft probably feels inclined to buy allot of bandwidth then charge Xbox users for Live!

Sony also use the Akamai CDN, however if you use both services (Live and PSN) you can tell they're very different in performance, I would assume because Sony doesn't charge for PSN, they then buy a little less bandwidth to save a bit of money, bandwidth is actually very expensive afterall and can drive up costs for companies into the millions.

On the flip side, when an ISP wants to capture certain data packets that exists on the Akamai network, you need a very expensive piece of equipment, ISP's might want to capture the packets in order to cache it to save money and speed up transfers for users or make it data-free for people who are on data caps.

In the end, Valve/Steam, Microsoft/Xbox Live and the Sony/Playstation network have a very different setup when it comes to content delivery and are NOT comparable.
If anything, Steam/Valve have the superior implementation as there is allot more redundancy and bandwidth to go around.

they can add 20 million members in an hour and the hate would still be more than justified. you dont get what you pay for with live, you get what you dont have to pay for anywhere else. lets hope microsoft let people use things that are actually free next gen for FREE and make a gold a subscription worth fucking paying for!

You should have picked a better service. People do pay to make calls once they have a phone.... Your comparison is absolutely terrible . Seriously people, it's $60 a year ffs.... People spend more on fast food, alcohol and cigarettes. You know, things that slowly kill you? Leave xbox live alone. I pay only $40 for 12 months, that's $3 a month. Constant threads about something that costs only $3 a month, which even worse, YOU DONT EVEN PAY! GROW UP!

You say that as if I am on a mission. I see a blue box where someone quoted me, your post is full of lulz, I respond correcting you.

There are people who think everything should be free and feel that they are entitled to play games like it's some kind of right. Look what happens when a light hearted thread tryings to discuss why people choose to play games on XBL: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=155821 Attacks on personal character and missquotes taken out of context.

You both are trying to justify something unjustifiable.