Microsoft to increase price of Xbox Live Gold

[Euphoria14]

steverhcp02 said:

I feel the vocal ones against this see the bigger picture of how this industry is intertwined. Some of us see beyond the breakdown of cost per day, etc. and see the bigger picture of the industry.

MSFT is very influential in terms of online gameplay because of Live. If they can get away with increasing the costs on a section of their Entertainment and Games division which is already in the black and offering bonus things (Last fm, netflix, facebooks) that people use for free elseware and things like ESPN (ESPN3.com allows a lot of free over the web viewing of major events) then companies can/will follow suit.

I suppose my (cant speak fo rthe rest) frustration is equally split between MSFT for knowing this and doing this and the gamers here who dont give a shit because of bias and refuse to see the precedent being set by this.

It was one thing for charging for online play but the fact they have ads already, make nearly 1 billion a year on this section and the features they claim to add are FREE everywhere else, the fact that some people truly have no sense of the bigger picture as consumers is really sad for me.

I wouldnt give a shit if this industry wasnt special and completely dependent on one another. There isnt much differentiation anymore, 3rd party exclusives go the way of the do-do, this gen there are very few differences and things like this dont bode well for the future, imo.

Now, queue up the tinfoil hat comments, i dont own a 360, its only X amount per day, but if we could step back and see whats actually happening......... its not good for any video game fan.

AMEN!

The thought of anyone thinking this is a good thing boggles my mind, because this route that people are accepting is a bad thing for gaming. A bad thing for fans of all consoles.

Things like this are the reason why Activision is thinking about Pay to Play for titles such as Call of Duty.

Things like this are why Miyamoto mentioned that Nintendo may charge for online play in the future.

Things like this are why SONY will follow next gen, especially if Nintendo does.

 

The right route would have been to cheer on SONY with their quest to equal LIVE, then keep PSN free and then hope that eventually MS followed suit and gave them LIVE online gaming at zero charge. That is win/win for the consumer. This is lose/lose since they were already making 700M in profit, now raise rates and you still see no new exclusives because of your investment.

But that would have made sense. The reactions I am seeing here unfortunately do not.

I'll just say "I'm surprised it took this long!" or "I think it's worth it so i'll pay it!" once Cablevision raises my rates again.

That'll teach em... -__-