I think it's such a stupid concept of having to pay to play online. Take CoD or Halo for example. You pay 50 bucks to be able to play the SINGLE PLAYER CAMPAIGN. That's it. You buy full price for a game and only get half of the content. People are pissed off on Capcom for adding DLC on the disc? this is waaay worse. To be able to play the full game you have to pay to get online. Sucks ass.

I will pay for Xbox Live forever! Best service ever imo.

Halo 4 is a black on Live.

Man with vested interest in being "famous" spouts vitriol of one of the big three...

I don't know what's worse the actual OP or the responses claiming this is for the greater good of gamers. Ads are here to stay, funny how they start lambasting Microsoft and not the hundreds of mobile gaming companies that have ads despite actually being paid for in some instances too.

As for S.T.A.G.E with his most gamers are going to PC comment, you really are dreaming. The mobile gaming market will expand most through tablets and phones, PC gaming is a shrinking market and that will continue. For the record I'm a huge PC gaming fan but it simply cannot compete with the ease of other devices, DRM is destroying the PC gaming market imo.

He is the guy who called basically all consoles shit. 

He's a PC gamer dude, but he also enjoys the consoles.

I never said most gamers are going PC. I said a lot of gamers that I know are going PC from having the 360. It delivers the same experience  Xbox Live is providing save for Halo, Gears & Forza. PC already got Fable and Alan Wake.

He doesn't know what he's talking about yet he owns an Xbox with Kinect and at one time paid for Xbox Live until he got hacked. Because of the user demand to hear his opinion he has his own show on GT now. A lot of gamers across the board agree with him and some disagree on certain subjects, but usually when he speaks he has all gamers in mind and doesnt call out specific groups. Pachter is a business man, of course he's going to call out dissenters to Microsoft cause and lastly his only ins are Microsoft, Activision and EA. 

Steam, free, does everything XBL does and much more.

Not sure where Halo 4 came from but it's a pretty good game for sure.

I agree that, as a gamer, XBLA should be free. But that's because I'm a cheap bastard who doesn't even like paying full price for the best games. However you can enjoy all the multiplayer without paying for XBLA. All you need are real life friends willing to come over and play split screen or LAN. So if youbreak Halo 4 down into its most basic pieces it would be Campaign, Online Multiplayer, Local Multiplayer. Which would mean that you pay for two thirds of the game and then have to pay for the last third. But as far as content on the disc, you can use all 100% offline.

On the topic of paying for XBLA. I do wish it was free. Like I said I'm cheap and wish everything was free. But since it's not I don't think the price of a year of XBLA is too much. I buy my year subscriptions on Amazon.com when it's on sale for $35. That's comes out to about $2.91 a month. Even for someone as cheap as me can't say that $2.91 is enough to get upset about.

There isn't much difference now. The main thing i like is the unified match making system. But sony would not have improved psn if ms didn't force them by having a better online experience earlier on in this gen, and ms wouldn't have had the better online experience without the monthly subs.