Why don't I have a Gold LIVE account right now? Simple.

It is a ripoff. No matter what anyone tells me, the service is a waste of my money. Why pay $50 a year ONLY for online play when even my Wii... hell, even my PS2 gave me the same damn thing. B-A-S-I-C O-N-L-I-N-E P-L-A-Y.
My PC has been giving me that for hmmm... I can go way back, before LIVE and find games I could play online for free. I used to do DeathMatches on Doom II and Quake.

Cross game invite, voice chat, blah blah blah. Not worth that price.

Why pay for all these things that PSN is giving me free of charge?

Free > Pay to Play in my opinion. Specially when the free server gives you dedicated servers and the pay to play mainly runs on P2P. You figure it would be the opposite right?

Also even though many would say this is a bad excuse, it is a great excuse in my opinion. I HATE running damn wires around my room. There is no problem with Wireless. I run UT3, etc... no problems what so ever.

xbox premium 300
wireless adaptor 100
enough live to last the generation (2005-2012)= 350

total cost for xbox with wireless and live= 750$
total cost for wii= 250
total cost for ps3= between 300-400 depending on how/where you buy it.
Now throw into the mix faulty hardware over the first 3 years

xbox=double the price of what is supposed to be the most expensive system

The cost to run XBOX live and the cost of running an MMORPG are completely two different animals. You are talking about a lot of labor for maintenance and a lot of money for equipment for running an MMORPG server. Still, they are making money out the *** from subscription fees. I believe that subscription to online should only be what it needs to maintain the server, you paid their profit when you bought the game. Now the maintenance to run XBOX live would be significantly less. I can play World in Conflict online for free, why can't you play Halo 3 for free?

This.

No, it's not a big deal to pay $50 a year.  Hell, I wouldn't even be hurting to pay $150 a year or maybe even more.  I really like to game and it's just part of my gaming budget, right?

But I still don't understand, could somebody PLEASE give me a straight answer:  What's better, $50 a year or $0 a year?  It's pretty obvious to me, and the only reason you pay any more per year is because you let Microsoft do it.

I have a Wii and PS3 and don't play online that often. I'm going to take the plunge and get a XB360 just for the online play because I'm getting harassed by my coworkers to play COD4 with them.

It doesn't sit all that well with me to have to pay extra for a game that I've paid for. It's kind of like DLC that you "have" to buy one month after the game is released. You just have to ask why they didn't include it in the original release.

Sounds like you need a gaming PC then.

yes of course its that big of a deal.

some people are working out 3p a day or 11cents a day etc, its not about that at all, its the fact that u have to pay full stop.

eg if my live runs out 2mro, i would have to pay 39.99

i say no to that.

i enjoy psn as its free and does exactly the same thing as live.

remeber the only diffrentiating factor with live silver and live gold, is live gold lets u play online, psn lets u do that for free.

so the $50 a year charge is a no go for me and i will never subscribe to it

Ever since Sony updated their PSN services not to suck anymore, it's becoming increasingly difficult to justify it - the few perks there are now (like G-score being much better than those crappy trophies sony came out with) are hardly worh 50$.

Unfortunately it's the better platform overall so...

Why not whine about it?

If every 360 gamer whined about it, you'd probably get your XBL Gold for free. That's exactly what happened with Windows Live.

But since virtually no existing payer feels like complaining, they'll never stop.

I thought it was retardation to play games online using a wireless connection. Wireless should be for minor things not gaming.