I dont know what service they are providing, so I beg to question. Everything they charge me for the competition believes should be free.

well im obviously not jaywood. but i have to disagree with him about player count as someone who owns both systems and plays both extensively (roughly 50/50). it seems to me that player count for online games are pretty much identical.  when i played Uncharted 2 online just before uncharted 3 came out. the player count  was consistantly over 40k players. unfortunately Uncharted 3 doesnt have a player count, but judging from its much greater sales than uncharted 2 over the same period of time, and its much greater focus on multiplayer, i would guess its at least double. and Uncharted 3 has become one of my favorite if not, my favorite multiplayer game there is. i play uncharted a lot, and it apears the player count is huge (but with no official numbers its impossible to know.

as for other exclusive games, the only other one i have put significant time into was Killzone 3, but i havent played for at least 6 months. but at the time the player pool felt fine, not as big as uncharted but good enough where i was dominated by expert players. and when my friend let me borrow his Move to play it, i was great. much better than most players. it quickly became one of my favorite multiplaer games. it has an amazing class system, and every thing is balanced, special abilities and weapons are great. Killzone along with all the halo games, uncharted games, and gears of war games are my favorite mulitplayer games ever. if i had to rank them. it would go Uncharted 3, halo reach, killzone 3, halo 4, uncharted 2, gears of war 3. but they are pretty interchangable.

also other games on PS3 seem to have equivalent player counts to xbox. call of duty black ops 2,  seems to be around 400,000 for both. i dont think battlefield has a player count listed (cant remember havent played in a while, becuase i dont like its multiplayer) but it seemed just as player filled and competative on both systems.

as for his claim about psn not having active multiplayer games outside of call of duty and battlefield. i dont feel thats acurrate. but it seems xbox live isnt much different in online communities than psn.  both are dominated by call of duty and battlefield, while obviously xbox has halo, which is huge (but i do wonder what what have a bigger online player count in a couple months halo 4 or battlefield). But even xbox second most popular exclusive isnt played that much (relatively). Gears of War seems to have a pretty small player count now days. i would say uncharted 3 has a bigger one.

this is a list on most played games on xbox, its not online player count but its the best evidence i have got. 

Top Xbox Live Titles

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops II
2. Halo 4
3. Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition
4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
5. EA Sports FIFA Soccer 13
6. Call of Duty: Black Ops
7. Assassin’s Creed III
8. NBA 2K13
9. Modern Warfare 2
10. Madden NFL 13
11. Battlefield 3
12. Borderlands 2
13. Skyrim
14. GTA IV
15. Halo: Reach
16. Gears of War 3
17. FIFA 12
18. Forza Motorsport 4
19. Hitman: Absolution
20. Forza Horizon

Okay, I'll bite.

I paid for a single year's Gold subscription and didn't resubscribe when it ran out. I felt I wasn't getting value for money. At all. In the slightest.

I game a lot across many platforms, and paying for the privilege to access online services feels crazy to me. Unfortunately, because I didn't resubscribe, my 360 is now less useful, and it has kinda been relegated to a kids' machine with Kinect (my daughters use it for Dance Central, mostly); I use it rarely because to get full access to its capabilities I have to pay a subscription, and I see no reason to do this when I can play fully on PS3 or PC or Vita or whatever else for free, and get significantly better discounts than Microsoft ever offer (Steam, I'm looking at you). So, all multiplats are better for me on PS3 or PC.

So, what could Microsoft do to make me consider resubscribing?

Not sure.

Playstation have already done the free-games thing, so if MS duplicated that, it wouldn't really inspire me to take up another subscription when PS+ already offers so much across two gaming platforms (and it does offer a shed-load of games and extra services for the cost of a single retail title per year -- that's good value to my eyes). MS would have to offer me a unique service that other platforms currently don't have available (much like PS+ did when it started to offer free games). As it stands, Microsoft offers me nothing I can't get from other platforms for free, and that, for me, is unacceptable. I cannot justify paying for Live.

So, to answer the OP: I don't know what Microsoft can do, exactly, but I do know it has to be something new. What that would be, I don't know, but I do know it wouldn't be something like Twitter access, or Facebook access, or Netflix access, or LoveFilm access, or whatever, as all of that already comes free elsewhere (on my PC or my phone, for example). It needs to be a new, unique service to attract me now.

I understand that others, especially single platform owners, are happy with what Microsoft offers. However, I am not. As it stands, they need to offer me much more to attract me back into the fold.

I've been playing Black ops 2 on the wiiu and i have to say its the most stable cod game I've ever played, I have yet to be kicked from a game. Xbox live is good but needs to be free end of story, I cancelled my live account 2 weeks ago and I ain't going back untill its free.

Are all of your gaming friends on Xbox Live?

Strike 1

What games do you mainly play on Xbox Live?

I am sure we've paid for live for the same reasons which is beyond our control if we like their games.

That would be cool if they gave you access to Netflix or hulu plus with your gold subscription.

Thats what they are doing. You have no access to that without it and your Youtube either.

I didn't say servers on PS3 are empty, I said the PS3 exclusives have bad online play. This causes a lot of people look elsewhere for superior online games.