I respect Bill Gates the man and it's his choice what he does with his wealth (gained from Microsoft or not), same with any of the high up employees. 

The second sentence was more a general stance based on the subject and what you quoted. The employees above are not MS the corporation. The corporation who wants you to use Bing and IE. Employee's own doings with their own money isn't really the corporation, all we know is that MS employees some dang nice people.

It is indeed, my friend. I just bought a PS3 when I got the news about PS4 charging for online and not being backwards compatible. There's too many good games on it for me to miss out completely. But this gen, it'll be PC and Nintendo for me.

XBL will not be free, not after the success they had with the 360. Last gen consumers showed that they care more about entry price than they do long term cost. Microsoft will gain a bit in terms of X1 sales but loose a ton of potential revenue.

Wow...you guys think so highly of Microsoft. I could never see them doing it.

If you got yourself a PS3 you should get PS+ anyway, but are you not going to because of a principle? Are you aware of how many great games you'll get for free through PS+, plus discounts? You'll be able to use that same subscription later on the PS4 too (you can even 'reserve' PS4 PS+ games in advance if you're not getting a PS4 immediately)

"free period of Xbox Live Gold"

so it isn't really free, not for long anyways.

I think they need to show more value outside of just Kinect for the $100 price tag, six months of gold, a game or whatever would be a real nice gesture. Maybe advertise KI free to play download for the uninformed.

That's right. I won't encourage companies to charge for what should be free. It happened with Xbox Live (people actually paid) Sony saw it and decided that it wasn't a bad way to make money. If my attitude pushes me out of console gaming then so be it, but I can promise you I'm not alone. The 'core' demographic will grow smaller and smaller, as more of these money grabbing policies are introduced. People will decide enough is enough on principle or that they simply can't afford it anymore and original AAA titles will become a thing of the past. Unless these companies figure out a way to sell their product without the consumer feeling like they are getting screwed myself and others will leave.

I thought MS always gave like a month or 3 of Live free with new consoles. Additionally, Sony is doing the same with PS4... so I don't see how this idea of limited free Live changes anything.

MS won't do more than a year's worth of Live if anything. But Sony could easily match that.
MS can't really advertise that you get all these free games during that year too as PSN+ also gives free games.

MS best option is to simply bundle the console heavily out the gate with variations of its biggest launch games as well as toss in the headset and charge-n-play accessory.

Temporary, it can happen. Permanent, its doubtful.

By the way, why does everyone love to make dubious titles?! Its like they need to sell these threads now. How to dramatize 101.