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

[Mr Puggsly]

o_O.Q said:

well i'd expect that regardless of if its the same ad or not whenever an ad is shown microsoft gets paid for it

"It was repeated probably 4 times on 4 different pages"

taking your example above if my assumption is currect i'd expect that microsoft got paid 4 times for that... on tv when for example an ad gets shown multiple times in a day i'm pretty sure that the network is paid for everytime the ad is shown

if we take your 4 ad example above and multiply it by millions of xbl users you can understand why some people may think that xbl may be supported through the ad revenue but since we don't have the specifics on how it works we can't be sure

No, nobody its paying each time their ad is loaded. Web advertising is generally sold as a package. Basically they pay a certain price to have their ad run for given amount of time.

Xbox Live runs servers for all games (excluding EA), covers all bandwidth cost, and they spend a ton of money acquiring exclusive content. PSN does none of that yet they've been losing money for years. Providing these types of services isn't cheap and a few easily ignored ads can't possibly cover it.