I didnt know that the thread maker was so into Microsoft. Well, cant blame him :)

$8 a month certainly isn't a bad deal...if the other services weren't free. It just seems stupid that so many gamers are willing to fork out that $8 a month without thinking "why?" I fork out $0 a month for my gaming, and I would never pay for a service, other than MMOs, which are understandable...lots of server costs.

I pay $3.85 per month by buying the 12+1 month card at Best Buy.

Live doesn't have server costs????  In fact, they are storing more information on Live than any MMO out there.  Perhaps I have too much disposable income.  I have over 300 dvds, a waste to some.

This is one of the factors that will help me decide to buy, a PS3 or a 360. My friend said it would be free soon, I guess he was wrong :(

If you don't want to pay it then don't pay it.

Skeeuk you have a PS3 also (which i can see you prefer by a mile) so ofcourse you won't pay for Live because you prefer what Sony has to offer.

But for me i have enjoyed Xbox live for over 3 years and although i wouldn't mind if it was free, i have found it to be a small price to pay for my online gaming needs.

You realize MMO's still require a subscription fee on consoles.  Also they require you to buy the game, which is apparently adding insult to injury.  Granted FFXI does not require a gold membership on the 360.  But it does cost $12.95 a month and an additional $1 per character.  (I believe WoW allows 50 characters on one account)  That $15 for WoW goes towards very stable servers (in my experience) and regular updates (new content, improvements, bug fixes, various tweaks for balance, etc).

I don't get why you keep bringing up the fact that you have to pay money for PC games.  Are you not paying for 360 games?

I think he is saying that $15 is steep for only one game.

And MMOs on PC require you to buy the game + subscription fees most of the time as well. I can go out and buy WoW for $20, and then have to pay $15 or whatever ungodly price MMOs are a month (and I mean that regardless of platform).

At any rate, I think paying so much for MMOs are stupid...Regardless if it's WoW or whatever. You still have to buy expansion packs (Burning Crusade, Vana'diel for XI, Wrath of the Lich King, ect)..And then subscribe...Crazy

Um... maybe to SOME of you pc gaming online is free, but have you ever been the one shelling out for the dedicated servers and voice chat servers?

There's a lot of generous people that offer their servers up for public play, or mooch off a university network or other workplace network where they have connections and no culpability.

There's the cost of the hardware to run those servers and the cost of bandwidth, and the cost of time for update and administration of those servers if you do it yourself.

At one point back in the day I was shelling out 180/month for a server + voice chat server for my team. I wish Live was free too, but I pay less than 4 bucks a month for what I consider reasonable enough quality of service to pay a whopping 4 bucks.