As we astablished above...you can play online for free. Crate a new xbox live username every 30 days...you get 30 days of free online. I admit its a little outdated to pay for online play only but a service where you can chat on msn while in the game and talk to select friends over a private chat line at the same time is worth 4 bucks a month to me.

@TheBigFatJ

I personally didn't like GTA4 online either. Takes to long to load and games are rather short.

Some games work great, others not so much...
If you want to play your freinds only its great I think no mater what game you chose. Also games like halo and COD4 rock. I can have 4 people play from my xbox 360 online in Halo 3. There is a reason 360 has dominance in FPS games...

I do think that dedicated servers will be a great addition. I think that Fuel of War game had some implemented already...

Well, I'd been doing multiplayer gaming with FPS games since 1993 -- about a decade before MS brought it to consoles. I really burned out on it a lot when I finally played TF (Quakeworld) and then counter-strike, so online FPS games, especially the more vanilla style like Halo 3, are worn thin for me.

I've got a 12 month subscription to live, but the fact that I don't use it often makes me feel like it's being "wasted". Which sort of makes me feel like I "should" play it. And I should really only play it when it's what I want to do.

Like I said before, the extra features that XBL gold offers are dandy. Chatting with friends are great, so are exclusive betas and a large store inventory. But why NOT have a choice to be able to play with friends without all the hooplah? What if you have other means of talking to select friends during online play? what if you just want to play online every once and awhile? Is it too much to ask for an option (what Silver SHOULD be) to just play online without having to change your name and lose all your achievements? I fail to see how someone can get branded as "Wii/PS3 owner that doesn't appreciate XBL gold for 50/year" if all we want is a chance to play online with other people. If people like me want all the extra goodies that gold offers then we'll buy it, but online play should NOT be used as a selling point for Gold service, yet it's the biggest and only reason to fork over 50/year in the first place and that should be changed. I'm sure even you would have to agree with that.

No FREE ONLINE GAMING. From the frustration my mates have on PSN, for gods sake dont make it free. If you cant pay a pathetic £4/month for the best experience then why you bother complaining. And yes Whenever we play Motorstorm online at mates house in a 3 hour session we are kicked off at least 5 times. And it lags pretty bad.(Well compared to Live, and if you havent played F2 online then I wouldnt comment because it's noticeable after playing that.) Yes he has 360 and no it doesnt happen on that, so it's not his connection. I have had Live for nearly 2 years and have been kicked out TWICE.

My suggestion is something that they would never do (but Nintendo might) ...

I was thinking about how Nintendo's friend code system could be warped into a "good" system and my thought was if your online system was much more of a social network setup. If your system trys to match you with your friends and your friends-friends then you should get a lot fewer 'anonymous' dildos who offend you, and your online community should be made up of people you play most of your games with. Certainly, this wouldn't work for ranked matches, but not everyone cares about ranked matches.

All of you people that don't want to pay to play with your friends could always use Xlink Kai: http://www.teamxlink.co.uk/. It allows you to play system link over teh webs.

I know you can hold locked games but that is not quite the same as what I am talking about.

One of the things I have thought about for years is a fair way to group people together in a way that people are not offended by the actions of another player. One of the benefits of a social network setting is you only play with people who you're associated to through a "friend" connection, which means that you have to preserve these "friend" relationships inorder to have a large number of people to play games with. This (of course) is not the be-all and end-all solution because you (obviously) don't want to have people who have no friends to be unable to play games online.

Clans would fill that need perfectly. I put it on my list and there are many benefits of communication, group gaming, organization, etc. you could get through a clan system.

It would be even better if XBL allowed you to join multiple clans for different reasons.