Jandre... YOU DON'T HAVE TO PAY FOR BASIC ONLINE SERVICE.  That includes browsing the XBLA.  You do have to wait a week after gold subscribers, however.  Although, being a PS3 user, waiting shouldn't be a negative.  So let me answer the bolded statement, you don't have to pay monthly for those features.

Edit:  Just to clarify, you have to wait a week to download demos after their initial launch.  Also, I agree that it would be more attractive if it were free.  However, I don't mind paying extra for it.  I'm not right now, because I do not play on line much, but I'll probably be renewing again soon.  However, while I wasn't paying, let me reiterate that I was increasing my gamerscore, messaging friends, listening to custom soundtracks, and downloading demos and purchasing XBLA games.

Your argument should be is it worth $50 to play on XBL servers or is it better to play on the game makers servers for free? With the actual game maker they can't support those servers forever but on XBL every game other than EA games(since they are run on EA servers) can be run by using your actual Xb0x/360 as a server. Therefore you can go back to that game years later and if a friend wants to play, you can still do it. That is what the $50 is doing. The other features you keep mentioning (and then some) are free on Live the same way they are free on PSN.

Socom 2/Socom CA say hello...lol. Sorry XBL is P2P just like PSN. What you think you are paying for you are not.

IF XBL had dedicated servers and 0 lad I would agree. But it doesn't. This is what I've been trying to stress. XBL and PSN as far as playing games online are equal. I'm not attacking XBL at all, I am just questioning paying $50 for features you get for free on another console.

They aren't enchacing XBL with that money. They are pocketing it all, and occasionally might throw a little money to get a demo earlier or free. I can understand maybe $5 to $10 a year for XBL. But $50 a year with no dedicated servers or free games makes no sense. Stop the defensive fanboy arguments and think about it. What are you paying $50 for a year?

Remember that M$ did not release a Spring Live update. They are probably waiting because they are releasing some very big features for the Fall update. Sony is now catching up to features that Live had as of last update and since Live inception.  You are paying $50 a year to pay for developers, engineers, hardware, infrastructure, etc.  Some companies just decide to pay for these things in other ways.  Why is it justified for WoW to charge monthly and Guild Wars not?

You just named 2 1st party games that can P2P but what others can? All the old Live games can do that once the servers are used for the newer games. So you think when games like Ghost Recon had server problems it was because everyones 360 was having FTP issues?

Yeah I mean, I guess I can see what we are paying for, and Sony is eating all of those costs to keep PSN free. I just don't think a paying customer is going to sympathetic to whatever minute costs the multi-billion dollar company Microsoft has to endure paying developers for Live upgrades.

I'll be generous and give developing a Live update a costs of $1.5 million dollars, though I think its much less than that. They make $50 a pop, from atleats 10,000,000 customers a year. I don't see how that even comes close to evening out. Before it was, because XBL was unique. Now XBL isn't unique, and PSN is free.

But I'm starting to see that this is pointless. I guess what I consider to be an undeniable conclusion others see as fanboy talk and an attack against XBL. Really I think that if you don't have a console yet, XBL costing money and PSN being free is a huge blow to Microsoft, especially with features now being so evenly matched. We shall see with the holidays approaching.

Well, i think everyone can agree (unless you really hate microsoft) than is better pay $50 for XBL over the weak PSN.

I mean, you see the people defending the XBL like fanboy and they see you like another sony fanboy trying to make him itself feel better for not pay to play online and thinking than PSN will be as good as XBL.

And, another thing, is stupid to think than microsoft will not add new features to make better the XBL over PSN.

yes it can if MS dont make any more price drops on consoles till 2009

MS earns half a billion USD Every year with live. (Just the fee to play, excluding Arcade, Video on Demand, Themes or whatever) Why should they make it free? People are paying for it and the userbase is even growing.

Well obviously if some games don't have dedicated servers that means it is NOT MANDATORY! Warhawk and Resistance both have dedicated servers as well but not all games have them.

Some games will some games won't. You do need a central network to manage all the in game messaging, friends invites, etc, but that doesn't mean that XBL has dedicated servers for all games. What is wrong with these 360 fan boys. YOU KNOW MICROSOFT HAS SERVER ISSUES. Just like PSN has server issues. But this guy is saying that all XBL titles are ran by dedicated XBL servers that will be up for eternity.

 lol. Are you all serious right now? You are paying for something that Sony is giving away for free. Thats the point. Haha man this is funny. Did you all believe that Microsoft was providing some sort of reliable service with the money you were paying? Some games will, some games won't. Most game servers are ran by the game developer themselves, just like Playstaion.