Are you done now?

You should really take your own advice.

I don't think Halo 3 just had "silver weekends" I played online, on weekdays, with a silver account. Halo 3 was playable day 1 online with a silver account, and that feature got removed, hence silver is reduced to push you to go gold.

360 gold deals are only available if you use your credit card. I don't trust anyone with a subscription service via credit card, I've had bad experiences with Rogers and stuff.

As for Games for Windows games being free, limited time thing or not, they still used to offer free online to silver members on XBL, and those games are still free to play on PC. How come someone with a PC version of Lost Planet gets to play for free, when a 360 user pays for it? They both use the same matchmaking service.

Who cares is PS3 exclusives have trophy's related to playing games for prolonged periods of time online. Online is free, so I have no problem with that. You mentioned that developers control achievements, but Halo and Gears of War are Microsoft IP's, MS has a lot of say in their achievements, and just comparing the new achievements in Halo 4/Gears 3, I feel weekly allowances of maps in spartan ops was a decision made by MS. Microsoft is designing games which require Gold subscriptions, stuff you can't unlock from a trail, and that's annoying. It makes the game more expensive to play and complete.

Another good example is that you can't get all the achievements in Halo Reach unless you buy a new copy of Halo: CEA. A used copy doesn't let you install the Reach map packs. , so you can't play a Reach specific game type and get the achievement from the Halo CEA game disk. Halo CEA is still a $40 game too....

My issues with MS are how they market, or in my opinion butcher, their games and services. Silver features have been removed, XBLG "Deal of the Weeks" are usually crap, and not permanent, Microsoft published games tend to have as much DLC in price as the game itself, achievements from 1st party games specifically are designed to promote XBL services (e.g. Kinect, or XBLG Achievements) there is no pay as you go plan for XBL, or 1 month XBLG card (In Canada there isn't), and 3 month cards cost about 50% as much as a 12 month card, so it's really not worth it, etc.

Microsoft isn't what it used to be. Gears of War 1 had free map packs after a year, but Gears 2/3 have 4 map packs, and their price never goes down permanently. Yes a lot of 3rd party's do this too, but they never used to sell old DLC cheap, and DLC for identical games on steam are supper cheap. Why is that? MS charges devs to sell DLC on XBL, so they can never bring the price down too much without loosing money. Steam encourages permanent price cuts on DLC, but XBL does not.

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Plus you're ignoring the fact that paying for XBL means you're paying Microsoft for what 3rd party's bring. If CoD has dedicated servers, your XBL subscription fee isn't paying for that, it was your purchase of the game which paid for it. XBL hate is justified because you're paying for nothing, and there are no pay as you go, or alternative plans to the expensive $60 a year subscription.

Are you done now?

Yes, it did work day one. For a few days. And then on the weekends sporadically it would work again. Sometimes they'd open it up late Thursday, usually on Friday though. And sometimes it would last until Monday morning, but normally Sunday night. It was never an every day feature. They let Silver guys play on the weekends, on their own, separate from when Microsoft would offer "Gold weekends". They stopped doing it because the community took advantage of it with boosting. It wasn't ended to "reduce Silver". Not sure what you mean by "gold deals require CC". XBL has deals on DLC, XBLA games, and full games all the time that are both Gold exclusive and open to Silver members and neither require a credit card.

But it was advertised from day one as a limited time thing. So when you talk as if they stealth killed the feature out of the blue to make people try to get Gold, that's not correct. It was a feature said from day one to be a limited time offer. And PC users don't have to pay because GFWL is terrible on PC. Or, it at least did when I used it. It's not a service designed for computers.

You're incorrectly laying the blame for something on XBL again here. Yes, some MS 1st party games have MP focused achievements. But so do many 3rd party games. So do many PSN games. It's not something related to XBL. It's something related to the gaming market in general. Furthermore if these are that big a deal, wait for a free Gold weekend and have at it. Regarding Reach, you can buy the map pack separately from the Anniversary game itself. You don't need to buy the full Anniversary game. The game comes with a code for the Reach map pack. If someone else bought the game and you bought it used, you run the risk of someone else using that code already. Again, this is something not XBL related or even XBL specific. Tons of games come with this type of online related code content now.

Yeah and you are entitled to that opinion about how Live "butchers" their games and services but most of your complaints don't seem XBL related just seem to be attacks on MS in general. Most games now have DLC and it's expensive. Most MP games now have achievements/trophies aimed at online play. Regarding Live costing more in 3 month chunks than a full year subscription, I honestly cannot think of a single subscription service where this is not the case. If you subscribe on a smaller scale you pay more. PS+ is the same way. DLC going down in price or not is up to the publisher, and no publishers ever budge much. This is going to be an issue on every console as we go into digital gaming and it's going to suck. Most games on XBL use MS's servers for the XBL features and their matchmaking. Including Call of Duty. So they do depend on MS for a lot. The exceptions are companies like EA, who require an entirely separate account system on top of XBL/PSN and use their own servers and the results aren't usually very pretty. If you don't like paying $60 you can pretty much always find deals. For example a quick Google search right now brought up many results in the $44-49 range for me. I have never paid more than $35 for a year of XBL. It's peanuts.

When XBL costs <$60 a year, the deal is usually only available over XBL, using a credit card. You can't buy XBL Gold subscriptions over XBL without a credit card, and at retail, $60 cards are almost never <$50 on sale. As for Silver weekends, I'm pretty sure I've played on a wednesday/thursday before as a silver account user. Not until the update in 2009 (I think) did I ever have a problem playing Halo 3 online as a silver member.

I've never used my credit card on XBL. I bought ALL of my 12 month Gold cards from Amazon and I've never paid more than $39.99.

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.

When XBL costs <$60 a year, the deal is usually only available over XBL, using a credit card. You can't buy XBL Gold subscriptions over XBL without a credit card, and at retail, $60 cards are almost never <$50 on sale. As for Silver weekends, I'm pretty sure I've played on a wednesday/thursday before as a silver account user. Not until the update in 2009 (I think) did I ever have a problem playing Halo 3 online as a silver member.

As an XBL gamer, I never saw the ads for 360 games which are also "Games for Windows" being al imited time thing. It worked for over a year, and then it disappeared, hence silver was reduced.

Also your arguement about Games for Windows is wrong, Lost Planet played just as well, if not better on PC then on 360. How come 360 players have to pay for the same service PC gamers get for free? XBLG is thus a rip off.

As for achievements requiring XBLG, I'm blaiming Microsoft here. They control what achievements their first party games have, and they also sell XBL. Making 1st party games which require XBLG subscriptions is conniving. YES 3rd party games and PS3 exclusive games make achievements related to long term online use, but for PS3 games, who cares, PSN is free, and 3rd party games are nowhere nearly as bad as microsoft. I have yet to play a single 3rd party game that required an XBLG subscription for a prolonged period of time. Achievements like Presteige on CoD, or 5,000 kills on Mass Effect don't require subscriptions, I can work towards those achievements at my own pace.

Your ignoring my point that online achievements are different then those which require online play for periodical durations. Spartan Ops maps are only available for 1 week out of 10, so you need a 3 month subscription of a 2 week trial to get them. Gears 3 requires you to play 30 separate weekends, that basically means you can;t get the achievement unless you get a subscription. This is different then say reaching level 25 in MP.

As for Halo Anniversary Map packs, I want Halo CEA, I just don't want to pay $40 for that and the Halo Reach map packs. If I buy the map packs separatly (and overpriced), and I buy CEA later, I'm already spending way more money then I should.

XBL is a service by Microsoft, so yes my complaints are towards MS. They control XBL, and XBL on it's own is bad, but how they mix it with their own games/services makes it terrible.

As for XBLG 3 Month cards, 50% the price for 25% the duration is a huge mark up, and there are no alternatives. Why is there no 1 month card in Canada? $10 for a 1 month card would be alright considering I only play MP for a month or so after a game I like with MP releases. Why do I need to pay $30 for 1 single month. That's the issue with XBLG.

XBL Gold in USA is cheaper then in Canada. Here it's impossible to find for <$50, at least legitimatly.

As for DLC, it's not expensive on Steam after 6 months. When Fallout New Vegas was selling for $20 without DLC on 360 last year, it was selling for $20 on Steam with the full game and all $70 worth of DLC. DLC on consoles is expensive, MS used to not be so bad with this when they offered old games with cheap DLC, but that is not the case anymore. Sony still does that, at least for PSN+ gamers, MS does not.