Unjustifiable? You act like your opinion is irrefutable fact.

You not wanting to pay for XBLG is a fact. You not thinking it's worth it to you is a fact. But it's all just a fact of your opinion. The fact is that millions pay because it is worth it to them and they aren't suckers for enjoying their favorite games. Your opinion is no more right than mine. I enjoy Halo and I'm willing to pay the entry fee for it and other Xbox games. I'd love if it were free, but it's not so I'll pay the tiny fee to get what I want. That's not justification, that's the reality of the situation. Free or paid I'm going to continue to enjoy Halo games. Now that's a fact.

I only really play games during the holidays (Christmas break and summer break) so I only pay for live during those times. For the past few years there has always been a sale for 3 months for a few bucks whenever I connect my 360 around the time when school finishes. I end up paying less than $20 for the entire time that I do play games. Basically nothing to get excited about. I think its worth it, especially since a lot of my friends are on it and I can play split screen Halo online with my brother. That is a lot of fun by the way, all the goofing around and failed strategies are definitely some of my best experiences playing games. So I guess friends and Halo make it worth the money.

I'm sure the 6 million new members is absolutely nothing to do with the annual banwaves or the spate of new nokia lumina phones that integrate xbl features, or people just making new accounts and other such things, it's for sure just 6 million people that went out and paid full retail for a years subscription...

Really though, registration numbers mean nothing, i freaking dare you to find a person that has just one account on the ps3 or 360.

As for the argument of "is it worth it", that's entirely up to the individual, sure it would be nicer if it was free, but it is not, you either pay or you dont, if your opinion is it's crap then that's your *opinion*, there are millions of paying live members who would dissagree, just like theres millions of potential online players who wish it wouldn't cost them extra to play online.

My only issue with it is that premium services should be a 'value added service', rather than an 'added service', so here's hoping the next xbox will allow a modcrum of online functionality for games, and just reserve access to premium servers and such for gold members.

No, the difference is that the core of PSN, Steam, Battle.net etc. are all still free to the user; MS' rivals find alternative revenue streams instead of forcing users to pay for the most basic feature. There are plenty of viable business models that don't block out the basic feature of playing games online behind a subscription fee. In fact, in the wider gaming industry we're actually seeing a push towards F2P products which all use alternative business models to generate revenue.

The mobile phone comparison doesn't work because at present, the only viable business models are the phone contract or pay as you go. What alternatives are there that are cheaper and/or free?

His comparison didn't work, as I pointed out, the phone is used to get onto the mobile network, a 360 is not primarily used to play on Live, the ISP is for that and you've already paid for it.

Also, an extremely cheap and even free alternative to playing games online would be to play football outside in a park with your friends based on this comparison.

To me the thread got out of hand as for those who use Live and pay for it, it seems they think everyone else is attacking them for doing so, while everyone else is attacking the idea of what Live is.

If you buy a game, which includes every part of it included on the disc, you should have the right to play evey part of the game and not locked out until you pay more.

Yeah, can't argue about PCs being less stable than consoles. But let's not go there any further 'cause it's not important in this discussion. (In some other discussion it would be, though.)

I'm fairly sure servers for third-party games get shut down more often on XBL than on Steam. Does EA shut down servers for its games on XBL as well as PSN? And then there's the thing that console games commonly use p2p-based solutions instead of dedicated servers which leaves only matchmaking servers for MS to handle. And on PC, you generally don't see such shutting down servers happening because often it's the community that owns the servers and it has worked just fine for ages.  And about Netflix... Well, it's not included in the XLB subscription, is it? Well I mean it technically is but you still have to pay for it in addition to XBL which makes no sense at all.

I'm sure you aren't sure.

Come back to me when Steam offers as much services as Xbox Live. Until then, they aren't equal.

Ha ha. Do list those services you speak of.

Because most of the services on Live aren't offered by it. Live merely serves as an added gate before you have access to those third party services. For which you also have to subscribe to, on top of Gold. Which isn't the case on PSN, PC or Wii U.

And Steam offers no option!

I gotta move Steam aside to get to Netflix. That's why I gave up on PC gaming.