The REAL Problem With Xbox Live (OPINION)

[Alby_da_Wolf]

Mr Puggsly said:

Alby_da_Wolf said:

Mr Puggsly said:

Would you prefer if your clothes were free? Don't you wish food was free? But what if the free options don't appeal to me as much as affordable pay options?

We pay because it gives us access to what we prefer. Also, its not a significant amount of money. Especially compared to other entertainment expenses.

This isn't about pride, this is people paying for a service they prefer on hardware they prefer.

If I were an XBL user, I'd simply prefer to receive for free what's free everywhere else (basic multiplayer, etc) and having to pay, if I want, only for the extra features and improvements the others don't offer for free or even haven't available at all. Plain and simple.

Nobody cares what would make the service ideal for you. This is what it is, you need to pay Gold to access ALL streaming and online gaming features. Whether it be exclusive or not.

We get it, you feel entitled to free online services and can get that somewhere else. But since the 360 has exclusive content many of us enjoy, that is valid reason for us to pay the Gold fee.

OK, it's totally true that for many millions XBL Gold users, improved multiplayer + streaming + extra features are value good enough to justify the fee, the simple fact they paid for it proves it.

But how can you know that a part of them wouldn't rather just basic multiplayer for free, if it just were possible? Or free streaming with MS charging a fee on content providers, but not on the consumers (that this way would end up paying indirectly MS anyway, but only on premium contents, not on free ones)?

BTW, it's not true that people want basic multiplayer for free: basic online multiplayer, be it based on P2P, or free 3rd party servers, is allowed by having an internect connection, and people normally pay ISPs for it, and the Gold fee doesn't replace the ISP fee, it's on top of it.