I did not experience a superior online service on 360, in fact I cancelled Live Gold over the poor performance and all the trouble I had with it. 90% of the online matches I tried in Test Drive Unlimited resulted in incompatible NAT errors. The headset had a terrible echo and poor sound quality, I couldn't understand what most people were saying and stuff just kept echo'ing around. I bought another headset, same thing. It worked on XBox, no clue what happened on 360.

After I cancelled live gold I got into GT5 online, played it for many months without any issues. Same with Resistance 2 co-op. Always just worked. I never looked back to live Gold, MS lost me there. Also all the ads plastered over the new dashboard were a pita and when you had the 360 offline you got empty squares all over the UI. To me it was the inferior online experience.

Yes people would prefer free online. MS also tried to introduce paid online to PC, it did not work. They might try again when GP gets big, or simply add it into the cost of game pass at some point when they get enough people in the locked windows store ecosystem.

So you're example of Xbox live not being as good was a 3rd party game and the headset? You didn't play Halo 3, Gears of war, Shadowrun, Forza? Halo 3 population numbers trounced any 1st party game on PSN, and Xbox was able to keep those services up with hardly any issues. Xbox live brought the feature of party chat, Cloud saves, made dedicated services a common place on consoles, and at least it included a headset. Shit, I would take the Xbox 360 mic over the Ps4 one Sony packed in with the console. PSN was subject to going offline more frequently, getting hacked, DDoSed, and was even hacked and brought offline for roughly a month or so. Nothing on that scale happened on Xbox live. Many 1st party games on the 360 are still online to this day. How many 1st party PSN games are still online? 

Now adays both services are roughly the same. I do not recall MS trying to make paid online for PC, and if they did they clearly learned quickly it wasn't going to work, and there is no way in hell they would try this now. So you are trying to make a 'what if' statement with nothing to back it up? Okay...

I have been with Sony since PS1 and this time I made the switch to XSX. I will get a PS5 at some point definitely but most likely only once they released a revised hardware as the size and looks of the PS5 are just retarded. Sony does not have interesting games at this time, only Demon's Souls and Miles Morales. And it will take some time for their big hitters to arrive.
In the meantime the XSX is a much better option due to gamepass and improved performance on older games in case you are into it (I am).
So for 2021 and 2022 I think an XSX or XSS is easily the best, and onwards PS5 will catch up with it's great game library. I think Xbox fate will be decided by Q4 this year and Q1 next year.
If Halo Infinite and Starfield can't move more hardware units and create steam for microsoft's next exclusives then I think the war will be lost by a very large margin again, at least in terms of hardware. That does not mean Microsoft game division cannot be very successful and lucrative even losing for Sony by a 2/1 ratio.

If you’re bringing up tracks and maps from Perfect Dark and PGR, then the answer to your question is SOCOM II on PlayStation 2, though IIRC they required you to buy a magazine to get them, very Amiibo like. They also pioneered the online pass with a SOCOM game IIRC.

Moral of the story is these are companies who first and foremost want your money.

I'm just stating my personal experiences with both services. When PSN worked in PS3/360 gen, it was more stable and far less prone to disconnects or not being able to match, at no cost. I did play Forza and Forza 2 but it was just a mess online. PGR 2 had the same connection issues as TDU. Paying for XBox Live also made me feel like I should be playing multiplayer games to get my money's worth, so gave up on it.

I've never used party chat, cloud saves, don't play old games, it's all not relevant to my experience. Mics worked fine in GT5 lobbies, same with Resistance 2, but at some point I abandoned the whole voice chat since it just interferes with the game sound. (Have to turn it down to hear people talk about nonsense, no thanks). I've only used voice chat again in ST Bridge Crew without any issues.

The actions of fanboys attacking PSN, that's a reason to pay for another service?

You have never heard of Games for WIndows Live?
https://www.howtogeek.com/244902/why-pc-gamers-hated-microsofts-games-for-windows-live/

Anyway, as long as MS keeps locking up your HDD space with their windows store, I am not going back there. I don't play on PC to get part of my PC locked behind a gated wall. That's for consoles. Let me do what I want with save games and config files, mods and what not. As long as MS doesn't open up their draconian windows store, they will never be the hero.

But I'm still tempted to get a Series X at some point if Halo Infinite brings the goods. The concept is amazing, but it needs a great single player campaign for me to bite. Forza Horizon 5 will be great as well no doubt. Maybe a Series S will do, looks so much nicer but no drive. Series SX revision?

Lets be perfectly honest here and i've been a gamer for many, many years, Xbox will never be the number one with a name like Microsoft behind it. Blunt but thats the facts, the name is pure mud in a lot of circles

No, I'm talking about MTX- like the winter outfit in Kameo for $2.50 and new cars in PGR for 400 MS points. Most early DLC available on Xbox was free except for Microsoft published titles.

Even if you go with paid DLC MS were the first to charge for that. MS charged $4.99 for DLC with MechAssault on Xbox Live before Socom 2 had even launched worldwide. Nice try.

"Microsoft is the chief architect of the premium content service and is probably as keen as anybody to justify gathering loot." Eurogamer -2003 expressing concerns after MS announce MechAssault debuts paid Xbox Live content. Source.

I haven't seen this particular attempt to re-write history before.

It's really straight forward. MS made some of the earliest examples of MTX, put it in their first party games, actively advertised and pushed the idea to other developers and then popularized the practice through their service- Xbox Live. They also refused to allow developers- including Epic and Bizzare Creations to release free content.

Apple better not go into gaming, as that name is cursed about daily in our house. iPhone, nothing but problems, yet stuck with it. No clue how many times my wife nearly called 911 just trying to reboot the infernal thing. (It's on the same buttons)

Microsoft made great games historically and still does. FS2020 has me hooked completely, more than any of the earlier ones I played before since FS 2.0 (on Steam though which is not ideal either but far less issues than through the windows store) However instead of continuing to make great games they made crap like AoE online and MS Flight (been 14 years between FSX and FS2020, MS flight lasted 6 months) Their whole venture into consoles and looking for new revenue streams has hurt their reputation for games, at least as a PC gamer.

I always associated the Microsoft Game Studios logo with quality, not so much anymore today though. MS tries to hard to be a jack of all trades instead of focusing on one thing and doing it really well. FS2020, while great, is suffering from the push to have to run on XBox. It's been continually downgraded since release to conserve ram mostly. Current issues are the limited draw distance, turbulence modelling (turned down on purpose according the devs to make it easier for gamers) and landing in cross winds (also made easier since release and now very unrealistic) Meanwhile updates are slow, a lot of problems present since release still haven't been addressed. Almost as if the devs are busy with other things...

So... cars or tracks in a MS title “count” but maps in a Sony title don’t? Bizarre. Again not even mentioning that you had to go out and buy a shitty magazine for the SOCOM maps, too, Amiibo before Amiibo. 

And no one is rewriting history. My point was, as I said, these are all businesses who have one main goal and that’s money. Personally I find the idea that MS started this or that to be laughable because MS or Sony doing something doesn’t mean the other has to follow, but they do. Because they want... money. 

So congrats, MS had “MTX” during the Xbox era and Sony had “MTX” during the PS2 era. 

Personal experience doesn't mean much when I'm talking about a fairly agreed upon idea that Xbox live was a better service. That like me saying, GWG is better than PS+ offering because I find the games to be more my taste. It's an impossible argument to go against because it's personal even though vast majority would agree that PS+ offers much better games. GFWL was terrible, and the fact I didn't know about that detail or forgot was probably due to fact hardly anyone used it. Either way, MS knows the PC community isn't going to pay for Xbox live so I'm not sure why you even think this is something that will happen later on. I'm not going to talk about the PC stuff anymore because it's off topic, and same with discussing stuff 2 gens ago.