Yeah.  I sent messages and a friend request to that gamertag.  It hasn't been used in ages.

As all XBL users are so happy, MS should increase its price every month, to make them even happier, but for some unmentionable reason it doesn't, selfish MS!!!   

I wonder if 3rd parties wanting a pie of the XBL profits provoked this.

Someday Live will be more expensive than the console itself...

I figured they would sooner or later.

Oh god....

*rubs face*

...a flame war...

.......a fucking flame war.......

We still have these!? Are there that many users who are still biased enough to actually do this shit? 

To many in this thread: You're pathetic.

Are you talking about me(I apologize if I made a mistake)? Sorry but I didn't get a PM, not even a FR :( and what do you mean by ages?you mean years? Because if you saw my recent games, Alan Wake and PoP:TFS are in there, and I don't think those are old games. BTW, I sent you a PM.

Hell no.

I am a Xbox Live Gold member for almost 7 years now. I paid 60€ on the original Xbox without any content except online gameplay. I would pay even more to be honest. The service is by far the best in the industry. Yes I tried PSN, Steam, Battle.net.

The thing that concerns me is what MS is doing with the money. The canceled Kin for example cost a lot of money and it even put the EDD in the red, even with the very profitable gaming business. So the fees I paid for Xbox Live financed a product I did not ask for.

Think about this insane number, 700 million USD every year. A big budget title cost up to 60 million. Literally, they could invest in 12 (after the increase) big budget titles every year. I think Gears of War 2 cost 20 million to develop. MS should commit themselves to invest 15% of the Xbox Live fees to satisfy the people they got the money from in the first place. That would be more than 105 million USD. Crytek's Kingdom, Remedy's Alan Wake are two examples for this. Spent more than 100 million every year on talented developers like Crytek, Epic, Remedy, Tri Ace even Insomniac and you are fine. With this money, it shouldn't be a problem to secure 2-3 big games a year. And as soon as MS makes such a statement, gamers would forgive them in a second.

zzmaro, I sent the request and checked your profile way back when you were defiling Alan Wake and you made the comment that I wasnt a real gamer.  At that time, you hadn't played xbox in months.  Plus, my request was on my outbox for weeks. Now if you're back online with your 360, it would be my pleasure to bury you in the 360 game of your choice.  I AM a real gamer.

Since I'm at work and on this site with my phone, I'll check your message via xbox.com.

I'm not sure the internet forums of the world could handle that, given how this thread has gone!

I'm amazed, really.  Now I actually don't have a 360, for perfectly sensible reasons.  And I'm not keen on the fee for Live, coming from a PC background I don't expect a surcharge for online gaming.  And I don't think Live gives anything much beyond Steam - and in some ways less - which manages to be free.

But... it's a choice.  And it's the first price hike in years so far as I know.  If you're comfortable with Live then really it's not that much of a jump if you believe the service gives value for money.

If you've never been comfortable with Live and paying a fee, or don't feel it's worth the money, then really you should vote with your feet and use a PS3 or a PC for online gaming and cut out the fee (or a Wii, sorry Wii online gamers!).

It's just what I'm doing, I use PC to play, but I don't totally agree with you about it being a choice for XB users: if XB users care only for online multiplayer, that's free on other platforms, if they want to play online XB exclusives they have to pay anyway for it bundled with a lot of features they don't care about, instead of having it included in the base free offer like everywhere else. I'm not uncomfortable with paying fees for value added features, I'm uncomfortable with MS relentless efforts to build a world where you pay for everything. And it's not a totally free choice for XB users as they aren't warned before buying the console that an important feature that is free on competitor platforms is instead a pay one on it. I get what you say, that they too could just vote with their feet, but I suspect that not all of them are as well informed as gaming forums users and quite regular gamers like us, that have all the infos we need before choosing.