| Hynad said: ^^^^ The apologetics I mentioned. Here they come. To answer your question, yes, I have a mobile phone. I pay to have access to the phone network. As phones always worked. There's nowhere I can go to phone without charge. Gaming? I pay my internet to get bandwidth. This allows me to play games online, among plenty other things. No services charge me for playing multi-player online, unless it's an MMO or XBox Live. I guess the part that said "everywhere else" didn't register... |
Oh, so you bought your phone. Yet you have to pay more to use services your phone offers. Right.
Youre paying to talk to someone, rather than going to see them. Youre paying a premium to write messages to someone, instead of telling them in person or taking the time to actually send them a letter/postcard/whatever. I mean, talking to people has always been free. Why should I have to pay a premium to talk to someone? Why should I pay per minute to talk to my friend who lives 5 minutes away?
You choose to buy a phone and you choose to pay for the extra services. Why? Because its convenient. Your friends have phones and it generally makes things quicker and easier. I think this is very similar to Live. You buy into the console knowing that if you want to use other features you have to pay extra. There are cheaper alternatives that are arguably better or worse. You go where you feel comfortable. You go where your friends are. You go where you think the services will be better.
When Millions upon Millions of people are happy paying for the service, why should they change it? You pay premium prices for premium services. Thats pretty much it. Thats life. If you dont like it or cant afford it then that cheaper option is open to you. Microsoft dont force you to buy an Xbox. You do that out of your own free will. If paying to use the online really, really bothered the consumer that much... Then the consumer would go to the competition instead.
