Xbox Live Gold is not good value, and it is holding the 360 back

[vlad321]

I fully agree with you, however on the point of it stopping sales and affecting microsoft I doubt that it actually does that. Console players DO have simpler and lower expectations and as far as they know LIVE is worth every dime. I've been saying that forever now.

I remember when I first saw LIVE come out I was intrigued, then I heard it charged for multiplayer and I honestly couldn't stop laughing my ass off. Recently my mom wanted to buy my brother a 360 and she didn't know about the LIVE fee, I told her, SHE laughed her ass off. My brother did too when I told him.

Now to my point, I think the problem is that people just don't know any better so they honestly don't mind bending over and taking the MS stick fully and happily. The PS3's service is quite similar (at least from a PC-player point o view) and it is free, so there must be something else. Also you forgot that yes the console also does indeed cost 100 less, but also doesn't have a BluRay player, so if you evaluate that at a measly 50 that means just buying a 360 and signing up for LIVE, you might as well have bought a PS3.

However why don't people just by PS3's? Because corporations spend millions on sociology and psychology to advertise and market and make sure all their customers are ignorant and uneducated, then they are willing to buy anything. I think that is what we're seeing here (also true with people buying crappy games non-stop, but that's a different topic).


@Jereel
LIVE offers what Steam offers in terms of gaming with maybe a few bells and whistles and absolutely infinitely more content through my web browser. MMO games are actually games supporting THOUSANDS of player at the same time interacting, imagine a Halo where you have 200 people on a single huge map and everything done is handled by servers.

 

@Jagged

Steam does the whole "millions of players online and installing/searching for games" already for free. Magically LIVE doesn't. Explain how.