What makes it special? What makes Xbox Live worth it?

[Reasonable]

Mr Puggsly said:

deskpro2k3 said:

Jexy said:

deskpro2k3 said:
Live should be free. To play online should be free. Gaming is not suppose to be an expensive hobby. (IMO)

Lots of things in life should be free.  But they aren't.  Especially when it's good enough that people will pay for it.  To call a dime a day expensive though... the economy in your area must be rough. 

 

Hey i chose not to use LIVE, I'm like the OP, is $60 a year good enough to play online?

 

edit: It is my firm belief that MS makes enough to support LIVE with the use of ads.

An infrastructure like Xbox Live can't be supported on ads a lone.

What do you judge that on?  I'm curious as I've heard this stated before but never seen any proof one way or the other.  I'm not saying it couldn't - but I don't see why it couldn't either, if you see what I mean.  What makes you so sure Live doesn't bring in enough advertising (because it has a lot of it, more than PSN or other similar services so far as I can tell as a 360,PS3,Wii,PC gamer) and what do you think the gap is - i.e. what percentage of costs do you think Ads cover?

I ask because I'm feeling, particularly with the new UI, that I'm seeing more adverts than ever which does cause me to wonder whether the additional fee to the user is really required or not.  It's not very much money as you note, and often you can get it for less - which immediately makes me suspicious as to what the real cost is if the RRP can be so often and easily dropped or wonder whether the increase in ads is to offset the number of people paying less than RRP.