Well MS said that they entered the console war because they foresaw the next Playstation going online and getting all the money they thought could be taken from online gaming.They consider online as a source of income ,not a service.

If they stop charging for the Live they may as well lose most of the interest they had in the industry of videogames.

But ,they also have to push their propietary software and development tools so there you go ....

I dunno, exindguy. I've been Golden since I got my 360. I renewed last week. But tell me, who benefits by making customers wait a week for playable advertisements (aka: demos)?

i think forever.

Forever. 4$ a month is not that much and if you are lucky, you will get free trials with games&accessories! I've got 5 months of free live and a lot of 48h cards. :)

I looked it up: Silver members do, indeed, have to wait a week to grab demos. I do agree with your argument but apparently MS thinks someone benefits (I imagine they do in that they think that if they hold back content they can get a few people that are on the fence to subscribe).

I have enjoyed live since its day one, even have a few, very few, buddies who i play with that i only know from there.

they can charge until there is a better option that does not cost, anad for a closed platofrm not likly, though game spy did let you use the original xbox without live... ah original halo online xbox

Agreed.

If you can't afford £2 ish a month to play online then quite honestly you shouldn't own a console.

Go and buy some food or apply for some benefits.

I've said the same thing in another topic, but I'll say it here as again.

I'm not sure who is actually unhappy paying for the service. I haven't met ANYONE who owns a 360 and isn't happy to pay for Xbox Live.

I think the people who are complaining are a select vocal minority of people who own the PS3 and just want to stir up trouble + people who still live at home and £2 a month is a lot because they don't work and their parents don't wanna cough up the dough.

Go and play outside or something, we don't care, quite honestly it would be better if people under 18 weren't allowed to use it anyway the amount of wannabe somebodies on there.

Also, the "Guardian" is hardly a reputable source for technology news!

12 million xbox live gold users can't be wrong.... we pay for it to ensure we get as many possible games that have online multiplayer... allow me to explain... wheres the online multiplayer for Virtua tennis 3, Virtua fighter 5 and Tony hawks project 8 but to name a few on ps3? they all have online multiplayer on the 360, theres now over 150 XBLA titles and a very high percentage of them have online multiplayer...... I love Doom multiplayer or playing 2 player on Ikaruga or Streets of rage 2, if microsoft make xbox live free it wouldn't have 80%+ of games that have online multiplayer that it currently has, if it was free it would have around the same amount of games that have online multiplayer as ps3 does... a POOR 55%

I'm not certain I see your logic.

You are suggesting that if Live goes free, that less games will be compatible with it? Despite the fact that one of the big selling points for 360 titles is such play? Am I reading you correctly?