I don't think Microsoft ruined anything. I don't agree with their priced online play. Because in all honesty I do think that is insanely priced B.S. and not worth it. But it is a decent service, and you can't blame them for this.

PSN is my fav, because it is a middle ground. Decent service for FREE! But again, not Microsofts fault.

it would be 399$ you know there is nintendo.

Add terrible controls (for all dual analog controllers) and that article basically sums up why most of my gaming time is on PC.

But isn't it better to have 3 choices than just 2?  

I don't understand why someone named Wiifan75 cares how much people pay for XBL unless he wish he had it too 

There are quite a few extra features on XBL that the Wii and PS3's online services don't have that makes paying for the service worth it....to me!

Are you high or something? Maybe 1% of N64 games were ever $40 new. All of them were minimum $50, most $60, and a LOT that were $70+. I already pointed out Killer Instinct Gold was $85. I know these prices for a fact because I have owned EVERY Nintendo console on day 1 and I have owned 90% of every console ever released in the U.S.. At one point I even owned 12 systems at one time. I even worked at Funcoland the day Zelda: Ocarina of Time was released at $65...

I have access to all three systems. Xbox live is simply a high quality setup.

FootbalFan is right. You can get free food at the local soup kitchens while a night in a five star restrautant is over $250. You pay for premium quality. Sometimes you pay alot. The decision on the value of the service is up to each individual. For me, $60 per year is less than a couple of hours of work therefore the value is fine. A student living on top ramen and soup can decide that the $60 is too much.   

The author had the right topic sentence, but pursued it in somewhat the wrong direction. Microsoft has had an effect of sapping the fun out of gamer culture. Certainly fanboy hatred existed before Microsoft entered and will endure long after they leave, but Microsoft has introduced a lot of "serious business" baggage in with them.

I can't quite articulate it.

crossgame voice chat and party system certainly aren't 50$ a year for me!. and with the confirmation by sony tha crossgame voice chat it's coming soon.

certainly.

Champagne can be fun, but you need water to live.

Well, here are my thoughts.

Microsoft is evil, full of assholes, and will do anything to empty your wallet, anything.

Xbox 360 is probably the worst designed mainstream electronic item ever made, never has there been so many failures (My 360 has RRoD twice and E74 error just recently).

MS essentially introduced micro transactions to the mainstream, sure they were there before but not at this magnitude. It has now gotten to the point that in order to get the full experience of your game, you need to spend even more money on content that would have been included with the game in the first place. What's even worse is when that 400 point piece of content was already on the disc to begin with!

Am I the only who finds it ridiculous to pay $3 for what is basically a wall paper? for clothes on a virtual person?

The amount of ads on xbox live is ridiculous too, I'm paying $50 a year to use a basic feature of games, online, that is free on every other platform, no other platform has ads in every menu and they are free. I don't care what feature you have, MS does not need to charge what it does for a basic service. As several other people have said, it's hard for gamers to say NO, I want the full experience, I have to shell out $50, and it sucks.

I can picture 10 years in the future, you buy a $60 game for the tutorial and you have to pay $2 for each new mission you want to do and you have to pay $5 for the conclusion. As long as gamers keep paying for these things they will keep making more of them. The only DLC I pay for are expansion pack like things that offer a unique experience that complements the original game, and even then it depends on the price, I will never pay $10 for 3 maps.

One thing I don't mind is the $60 price tag, sure it sounds expensive, but If you were to account for inflation I spent more money on "Tennis" for the NES then I did for Mass Effect, Mario Galaxy, or Ratchet and Clank. I consider these game prices a steel for the amount of entertainment I'm getting. If you want to know someone who is ripping you off head over to the movie theatre, where I live its $12 a ticket, for an average 90 min movie (I swear the average movie has gotten shorter over the years) That's $8 an hour! more than minimum wage!. Of course there are 3 hour movies that cost the same price so thats $4 an hour.

Now let's compare that to a generic shooter on the xbox 360 with 6 hours single player, thats $10 an hour but i'm sure you will spend double that online making it a little over $3 an hour. Now go to the larger games like Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Zelda, Final Fantasy which have 50+ hours and you can see that video games are the cheapest form of entertainment out there.