With 27 million xbox 360s out there and 17 million gold subscribers. We got a 10 million silver subscriber membership count, now my question to you all is is it fair for game developers to make Achievements that require you to purchase a gold subscription to simply even have the chance to get it?

My example is with Saints row 2 today, several achievements (listed below) require not only a gold membership in xbox live, but supposedly a friend who can play though a good 30-40 hours with you in order to get them all.

Example Achievements are as follows.

Duelist (25) - Complete all Ronin Missions in Co-Op

Potluck (25) - Complete all Samedi Missions in Co-Op

Seperated at Birth (25) - Complete all Brotherhood Missions in Co-Op

Partners in Crime (100) - Complete all Campaign Missions in Co-Op

Confidence Men - (25) Complete all levels of all activities in Co-Op.

Now, those are just 5 of several achievements in this game that REQUIRE a xbox live gold subsciber level. In this single game, they give 200 gamerscore which is 1/5th of the 1000 the game allows you to achieve. Meaning those gamerscore is deemed impossible for 10 million xbox live silver subscribers.

One may ask, why is it important? Well, many (albeit, too many) view their gamerscore as a measurement of their gaming skill. If its impossible to achieve gamerscore because you choose to or cannot pay for the premium membership, it isn't very fair now is it?

Anyway, just some food for thought.

Yeah, I think its fine... Its fun getting achievements while playing games online with friends... However They probably should have had local co-op as well as online to make it more fair I guess...

I don't care, I have gold.

I am gold and play online but dont like the online achievements and dont think its fair to the non gold members, I like the idea for split screen co op though cause anyone can get those

You think thats bad, not having a vison cam is stopping me getting a 1000/1000 on Viva Pinata 2!

well, you have Gold, you have more previligies....you pay to get more...

I don't like many of the multiplayer achievements either.
Most of the time games have about 75% singleplayer achievements and about 25% multiplayer (the way it should be)

But things like Saints Row and Turok bring my piss to a boil. Why do you need 2 Gold accounts, when you want to play with a friend over LAN (offline) ??? Doesn't make any sense.

I don't think there are 17 million gold subscribers.  When MS says "17 million on xbox live" they are including silver.  This means 10+ million are not even connected to the net (more in fact, 17 probably includes many cases where people have multiple accounts on a single box live (silver or gold)).

To your main point though, not only do many achievements require online play (gold) - many aspects of many games can not be fully enjoyed withouot gold (the lasting value in Halo is online - the single player will only remain fun for most people for a few weeks to a few months at most).  I think this is "just the way it is" - gold is required to get the full value out of many games - though very, very few games require it to offer "decent" value (Shadowrun being an exception - useless without gold) and of course games like Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fable etc. offer almost all their value with no need for Gold.

Yes.. it is fair.. if you want to enlarge your e-penis you should pay for it... that's life..

There a 8.5 million gold subscribers, as per a M$ exec's statement.