It'll be a sad day if this happens.  The entire thought of having to pay to play online for multiple consoles next generation scares me.  And you know if Microsoft and Sony are doing it, Nintendo will hop on board too.

Being a multiplatform gamer would absolutely suck.

To be honest I would still say Xbox Live is the better service having used both Steam and Xbox Live. So if Steam became as easy to use and streamlined as Live then sure I would feel that the former takes away from the need to pay for the latter. However I hate playing online though so I would never pay for Live unless they gave New Zealand some decent Live features like the U.S.A.

Anyway besides that there are people who complain that: Microsoft makes money on Live, Nintendo sells consoles for large profit margins, Apple sells products with large profit margins, Intel sells products with large profit margins etc. They aren't monopolies so there really is no cause to complain about the fact that Microsoft is capable of charging when there are at least 3 major competing services. The fact they can charge and the others can't/won't is proof enough that Live is the best service out there overall.

What.  The only reason it costs EA a significant amount of money for online play is because they host dedicated servers for all their sports titles.   This is why they are eventually shut down.  This is a non-factor for games that use a P2P network, which is why older games like the original Killzone still support online play to this day, even with a virtually non-existant playerbase.  There are literally no costs involved, as online play is handled entirely through consoles connecting directly through each other, as opposed to having to go through a server elsewhere.  It's much like bittorrent, in which there is no host for a file, rather users are leeching off of each other.

And Microsoft by no means "takes on the financial burdens of online play".  I'm not even sure where you could get such an idea from.  All they do is retain all information related to your online ID, and make it accessible for all games.  I suppose it saves developers the trouble of having to track such information themselves, but prior to such unified networks, they likely wouldn't have bothered with such things anyway.

Why else would EA be shutting down servers for online play even for titles that use XBL?  It's certainly not because Microsoft is providing the online service in place of EA.

EA is the only 3rd party that runs their own servers.

This is what MS told GamesRadar.com...

"So long as the expense of running servers and matchmaking systems has to be picked up by somebody, no online gaming service will ever be truly ‘free’. The cost of PSN and PC online gaming is typically picked up by developers and publishers. CoD4, for example, runs on similar systems on both console platforms, but is maintained by Microsoft on Live and by a dedicated third party company at Activision’s expense on PSN. Both play the same at your end and both work on a peer-to-peer system with a matchmaking layer to link players up, but on Live you pay for that layer, and on PSN they pay."

Apparently there is a financial burden and MS is taking it on.

http://www.gamesradar.com/xbox360/f/why-xbox-live-isnt-free/a-20080617101147502012/p-3

Ah, forgot about matchmaking.  That basically ties into providing IDs across all games.  It's a part of party chat, I suppose, given it facilitates joining a game alongisde your party.

However, matchmaking is a pretty small part of the overall online package, and it's not something all games support, nor is it something all games require.  Developers could easily get away without providing such a feature, and sometimes the addition of such a feature is actually met with disappointment, as seen with the outrage over Killzone 3 replacing traditional server lists from Killzone 2 with a matchmaking setup. It's one of those features that "prior to such unified networks, they likely wouldn't have bothered with" anyway, as I said before.

And despite Microsoft supporting developers with such a feature, it does little to ensure the continuation of online play, as shown through EA discontinuing online play for past XBL-enabled titles.

I figured you were gonna downplay it, what other defense could you possibly have? Well as MS said, online play isn't entirely free and there are financial burdens. I guess you won't be happy unless we can see some actual financial numbers.

I also remember reading Sony charges publishers for bandwidth on downloads. Something MS covers by the way.
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/03/20/sony-now-charging-publishers-for-ps3-downloadable-content/

EA IS THE ONLY 3RD PARTY THAT RUNS THEIR OWN SERVERS. Hence, you can't blame MS for those shutting down. Unless you want to blame MS for allowing EA to operate their own servers.

I never blamed Microsoft for shutting anything down, and I'm not sure how you could come to the conclusion that I did through reading my post.  I was simply pointing out that a game's online functionality is not guaranteed to always be accessible simply because it goes through Xbox Live, an idea that was implied by your earlier post.

You keep using EA as an example of servers being shut down and you're well aware those are the ones Live has no control over. Hence, those are the ones with nothing assured.

Anyhow, EA was just proof offering online play isn't free.

They also have the worst servers. The laggiest games I've played are EA games.

As I wrote in the first part you answered, I don't pretend to get for free expensive online services, but just basic online multiplayer, the P2P one, that requires little to no effort at all from publishers' servers. If the server is hosted on the players' consoles or PCs themselves, why on earth should they pay a fee for it?

And about the second part, making people pay also for basic online multiplayer is a business model followed only by a minority of gaming enterprises, if the majority is fine with making pay only for premium features, it's just the natural way of things that majority will prevail. Boasting the approval of large, but minority, gaming communities, won't make them become the absolute majority.