I don't think Live ever will be free, no matter how much Sony's service improves. But I think it should be, paying for online P2P is absurd, after 5 years it adds up to £250. In the long run it makes the 360 far more expensive than the PS3.
The very least MS should do is provide dedicated servers for every game. Whenever I encounter bad lag, I think: "Oh goody, I'm paying for lag. Thanks, MS!" Live has some cool features (in game messages, cross game invites, etc..) but I'd rather have dedicated servers to be honest.
PSN already has a few advantages over Live that people seem intent on ignoring, so over time, it will be much harder for 360 fanatics to defend paying for Xbox Live.








