Well lets see several months ago they added a 1 week delay on demos to silver accouts to try and make gold more appealing to thoes with out patience. Kinda sad IMO. Dont get me wrong I love my 360 but I really dont see why so many gold users want to defend the price tag MS attaches to P2P gaming. I'll do my online gaming on PC with dedicated servers and more than 16 players thank you very much.(the fault of Devs BTW except for frontlines) I had gold for half a year or so and ended up canceling it because I did not play games online very much certinaly not enough to spend $50 a year for an online match once or twice a month. The vast majority of other features of live are free for a good reason so more money can be made on microtransactions or intrest can be generated by demos.  

 Not sure if this is right but I think with the gold account you wouldn't have to pay a subscription fee for MMOs. Im not sure if ppl had pay for the Final Fantasy MMO or not. Someone on here im sure knows the answers. I'd have to say it would be nice to not have to pay a monthly fee while playing Huxley or Age of Conan (If they end up being good on the 360, AOC was pretty good on PC and I played it at the recommended requirements)

 I dont know about all the MMOs but I have read Huxley will have a subscription fee but you wont have to have a gold account for online play.

They haven't delivered these feature people keep saying will make xbox live it's bitch. Wait until it's out, right now they are sounding like blind fanboys, for lack of a better comparison.

Think what you want. I am not the one paying money to play my games online while everyone else plays for free.

No idea what else you think Sony needs to do. You can mention anything else you want, but point is, those little features you mention aren't what you are being charged for so it is irrelevant.

We are talking about basic online play here, not achievement, demos, video service, etc... those are all free with a standard silver account.

I guess we will sound like fanboys for another day or two, then it comes back to you.

All MMO's on LIVE require a subscription fee to play, they do not however require Gold LIVE accounts. All non MMO games however, do require Gold.

I am also pretty sure that people pay $50 a year not just for basic online, but basic online for ONLY 1 gamertag. The $50 fee doesn't make your 360 online enabled, just one gamertag, so if your brother or sister have their own gamertag, I am pretty sure they will need to pony up some dough too if they intend to play online as well.

Anyone confirm this? ^ Has this changed, is this still the case?

oh, I thought this was about home and shit.....

Well, it's worth it in my opinion, I don't mind paying. If you hate paying, then shut the hell up and don't use xbox live, that's all I can say about that really.

I'm so damn tired of these threads popping up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 I believe that its 50$ per gamertag since your gamertag acts as its own account so to speak.  However you can make your own profile name to use on local connections and single player type games but you cannot use that profile name online unless u buy an account.

Also thanx for the clarification. I did a little looking around and it seems now they may reduce the fee to gold subscribers or at least make it less than the fee for PC subscribers. Those are rumors however and im pretty skeptical. No worries tho, if either of them end up being good it'll be just like the days of paying for WoW and XBL.

Well then simply reading someones posts would help before attacking ones opinion. In terms of this thread I was only talking about basic online play. I was asking for reasons from users of the Gold service as to why the subscription fee was justified, but have yet to hear one valid response other than "Well, I think it is worth it."

Although it is nice to know if I don't use LIVE I am not allowed to give my reasons on why I refuse to pay.

Oh well.

PSN haveing = features to XBL will take awhile to float into the mainstream where people will recongnize it (we know Sony is pro at advirtising...). My guess is LIVE will remain a 50$ a year charge unless the sub numbers start dropping or they will drop the fee with their next console.