Free online every single time, after years of paying XBlive over the years (stopped 2 years ago) I saw nio significant major boost in quality of multiplayer games, always laggy and dropping even as my ISP provided me with upgraded connections over the years with it hardly being a fault of mine since I was getting better internet speeds whilst paying for internet that was getting better and paying for a console online service that wasn't, I just got fed up with it and stopped paying.
Flash forward to now and I still see no reason to pay to play online, unless it's an MMo but even then we're seeing options like GW2 pay and play forever model and Blizz now wanting to let us pay with gold.
After building a PC back in 2013 I've found it much better since I'm not constantly throwing money into a firepit that claims improvements but nothing happens from a company, all while getting cheap game deals on Steam, GoG, GMG etc, all without having to pay extra money to get price cuts, there's even some free games to be found across multiple sites and a friend of mine likes to gift me games on Steam now and then out of kindness.
Wii U and PC will probably be my main platforms I'll use for the foreseeable future (especially PC) since they don't really charge for online gameplay, if Nintendo decides to be exactly the same as XB and PS I'll probably drop them and just stick with PC and only buy singleplayer exclusives and only buy the multiplayers for PC (Pretty much what I do with multiplatform multiplayer games anyway), I just see no reason to pay to play online when I;m already paying my ISP and to build my machine, electricity etc.
Mankind, in its arrogance and self-delusion, must believe they are the mirrors to God in both their image and their power. If something shatters that mirror, then it must be totally destroyed.
