| NightstrikerX said: With 27 million xbox 360s out there and 17 million gold subscribers. |
I don't think there are 17 million gold subscribers. When MS says "17 million on xbox live" they are including silver. This means 10+ million are not even connected to the net (more in fact, 17 probably includes many cases where people have multiple accounts on a single box live (silver or gold)).
To your main point though, not only do many achievements require online play (gold) - many aspects of many games can not be fully enjoyed withouot gold (the lasting value in Halo is online - the single player will only remain fun for most people for a few weeks to a few months at most). I think this is "just the way it is" - gold is required to get the full value out of many games - though very, very few games require it to offer "decent" value (Shadowrun being an exception - useless without gold) and of course games like Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fable etc. offer almost all their value with no need for Gold.
