Be smart about your Xbox Live Gold membership purchase.

How much do I pay? I pay $25 per YEAR (about $2.08 per month) and Microsoft even gives me back $15 worth of 'points' to spend on anything in the marketplace every time I renew my subscription.

"How", you might ask?

The Family Plan, of course!

"What's the family plan, I've never heard of that before?"

Wow, what a great question! The Xbox Live Gold Family Pack is $99 USD and you get 4 (yes FOUR) Xbox Live Gold accounts that you can use to log into -any- Xbox 360, they are not tied to a single console. There are no restrictions on the family plan accounts, with the only caveat that you have to initially create them on the same console that the 'primary' account is on. Once they are created you can split them up, use them on any Xbox 360 console you want, even at the same time! 4 teh W1N!

More info: http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-live/marketplace-and-purchasing/billing-points-family-pack

"But Landsharkk, I don't need 4 accounts from the family plan, I only need 1!"

Very true! However, don't you have friends or family that have Xbox Live gold membership (or maybe some that want to try it out, but don't want to pay the full $60 a year?)? Sure ya do!

Get 3 friends or family together, all pitch in $25 and WHAMMO! You now have an Xbox Live Gold account that only cost you $25 per year!

I've got a feeling that once Sony realizes it can't continue on in the game console business by losing money every quarter, that they'll start to shift towards making everyone get a PSN+ subscription.  You'll see them start to move features that use to be free over to the paid subscription instead.

"When your competitors are free, it becomes a pretty glaring issue."

When your competitors are making a profit and you are not, it becomes a pretty glaring issue.

Dont overlook Steam  with  steambox coming very soon. Its free.

I just got Saints row with all Dlc's for $16 on sale limited time only.

*In other words I see Xbox live go free soon enough if you ask me.

I live in europe, so - no! There aren't any Xboxes around here! :D

Steambox might be cool (does it really exist yet? I've never seen it, or seen specs on it), but there's no way a first gen console will be able to compete with Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony, at least not for a good 5 to 10 years.

People will look at the steambox and say, "I can play steam games on it? How about console games?  What about game XYZ, the biggest game of the year that's coming out and isn't being released on steam? What else can it do besides gaming?" Then realize it doesn't have half the features or play half the games a modern console does and will move on.  

I'm not trolling, just being realistic.  

*Newell is a very experienced gamer. He knows what he is up against more than you and I think.  Thats being realistic.

Time will tell. But I aint worried at all.

Yeah. It's like you go to the store, and you have to pay money to be allowed to then pay for candies. Why people try to justify this practice is beyond reason.

It's not an outrage, you get what you pay for, right? However, I do think when your main competitor can bring their customers free online gameplay, even if it isn't as good as your own (which to be quite honest, that statement is very much up for debate) it makes you think a little. Basically, if Sony can do it, why not microsoft?  Obviously, they are a business, they are out to make money, blah blah blah, you catch my drift by now.

Sony is doing it, but can't continue to do it.  Did we forget that Sony is losing money like crazy while Microsoft is making money?

"Basically, if Sony can do it, why not Microsoft?"  Because Microsoft wants to make a profit and continue to be in business.  Sony does too, so we'll see a shift in the way Sony handles their console business very soon, and I've got a strong feeling it's going to be something similar to how Microsoft handles their console business.

There's a reason Sony is losing money, free online gaming, giving away free games, etc.  I'd like to see those of you who think Sony is doing well try to run their own business while losing hundreds of millions of dollars each quarter, and then tell me that they are the 'winning' business.

My thoughts mirror this. Paying for a highly advanced MMO that gives you tons of content over time and has a rich community beyond anything XBOX Live has on its own. XBOX at best serves as an ISP on top of the ISP you already pay for your internet so you can get access to other services (like netflix) that you have to pay also. The comparison to me is flawed.

However, if people want to pay for whatever, sounds fine to me. Hell, I pay for xbox live, though I think when I finally retire my X360 I will close the door on that, I haven't used my xbox for much of anything for 2 years.