must be for countering sony's premium service.

yea.... so they are going to single handily outdo netflix for $40/month. I don't buy it.

Also, even if they did manage that, the combination of Netflix for $15/month and free Internet TV on Hulu or on content providers websites is hard to beat right now.

XBL won't increase in price until next gen. That's the only time they would be able to get away with it.

In fairness, it's been 5 years roughly since the 360 launched, inflation has been ignored up until now.

Patcher is smoking something. People have already complained about the price of XBL. You really think MS would add another level of service? Especially for the prices he's talking about $100, $150, $500? I know a few of his predictions have come true but I think he's off on this one.

I predicted the same 2 yrs ago. Michael you are late to the game ;)

XBL Platinum would be ok imo.

Depending on pricing and features, I'd pay it.

Netflix is $200 a year. Live is $5-ish if you do it right. Just access to the type of content you could get from Netflix would be worth a pretty hefty price jump. Cutting your cable/satellite package by $10 a month even would be another $120.

It could work.

I don't see it happening though. The cable/satellite companies have such a stranglehold on some of this media. And they are so intertwined with the studios/networks that make the content that they aren't going to sign agreements to take down the whole system very easily.

If they could put out a yearly subscription for platinum service at a $199 yearly price point that would offer the ability to stream unlimited movies or t.v shows and have a large enough database and up to date , with the current features of a gold membership then I think that they could have quite the hit on their hands.

I JUST let cable go because of cost and I was about to fully dive into the whole Internet TV, wireless N, etc thing. But I read somewhere that there is a feature to stream internet TV from Windows 7 that currently is not hooked up to the 360 in any way. That same source expected an announcement at E3 (maybe one that builds on the whole U-Verse announcement) that would further push the 360 as a television hub.

So when you consider the previous $600+ I (and many others) were paying annually for cable, Pachter's "trust me, you will, because you're already paying that on your cable bill and a lot more" doesn't sound so crazy, does it?

No, MS will not up the price of Xbox Live.

Sorry Michael Pachter, we don't all make 150,000 dollars a year. Guess again dude.

Seriously this guy is on average more inaccurate than a weatherman. I'd kill for his job.

What's he smoking this time?