Some people will turn anything into an excuse to take a jab at a rival console they happen to not like. A couple of things this journalist fails to mention ...
Yes, Microsoft asks for $40 per year (only idiots pay $60 since 12 month always goes on sale once per year to $40), but in exchange you get cross game chat thanks to the party system. I can not stress how useful this is (especially to achievement people like myself who like to coordinate events between groups of people who are often in several different games). I really don't know how people get by on PS3 without it. I got nothing against the system, but if it was my main console I would have to get something to communicate with others with like skype or, as some of my friends do, play on PS3 while having their Xbox turned on so they can party chat (lol).
I will admit that there really is no good reason why we can't play multiplayer without Gold, but it really doesn't matter to me as I would gladly pay the 40 dollars a year just for cross game chat. Besides, are you really going to go play multiplayer all by yourself with no friends/relatives/Live friends there to play with you? Sounds kind of boring to me. Is kind of like playing against a bunch of bots with each AI set to a random difficulty ... may as well just play singleplayer.
Maybe next gen things will be different, but it is irresponsible for a supposed video game journalist to pick a meaningless fight like this for hits while also completely ignoring the fact that Xbox Live and PSN are not on equal footing merely because the PSN has made great improvements since its abysmal start.
