I don't think it'd make a huge difference as the current user-base has already accepted the pay to play model. It may increase sales slightly but I don't think it'd be significant unless MS advertised it heavily.

IMO Live should be free as other services like PSN and Steam manage to provide a quality service for free. You can argue that they're not as good as Live but in the end the only things that truly matter are which platform your friends are on. If you have friends on Live already then your going to be more willing to cough up the money to play online. But really MS could probably still maintain the quality even if it was free.

i think online play should be free, but they could add a premium service to take use of the extras

I suppose they could always find a way to make money another way, but I doubt they would find an option as simple and effective as charging those who use the service. Both that method and the ad based method use the scalability they need  because they are based on the amount of people using the service

You have no proof of any of the claims in this post.

The things that really annoy me are charging for themes, and then not allowing them to be released for free. I believe they wanted Braid themes to be released for free, but they weren't allowed to by M$... so don't get at Sony for charging for Quore

I think the boost to 360 would be modest at best - in the end Live ain't that expensive and I'm pretty sure there ain't legions of people not buying 360's due to that small cost.

PS3 sales I doubt would be affected - for the reason that I doubt many PS3 purchases are driven by PSN being free and Live being charged.

So all in all, if I was MS, I'd keep charging - assuming they see it the way I do that is.

I would buy a 3-6 tomorrow

it would mean more annoying kids, lack of support, end up like a ps3 with lacking in gd game titles, etc...

If -LIVE was free or atleast online multiplayer the Xbox 360 will be the best system ever, 2 days ago my LIVE gold account has expired and still I haven't renewed yet, this is the time I wished it was free.

Take away the privileges of new demos, videos, netflix, facebook, tweeter, on demand and other cool features to those Silver accounts just leave online multiplayer free for both accounts as default..

On gold accounts you should get the added cool features with standard online multiplayer

-With the cost of $60 dollars for a game plus $10 dollars for each DLC you would think online multiplayer sould be free to play them..

Call Of Duty: World at War is/was $60 dollars plus $10 dollars for the first map pack then $10 for the 2nd map pack and $10 more dollars for the 3rd.

 Call Of Duty: World Of War alone cost me $90 dollars, I think that will do it to play online multiplayer for free..

Now I have to renew my Gold account for $50 "again" to make my $90 dollars of COD:WW worth the purchase..

I dont mind the $50 a year if I ever wanted the added cool features like, ..netflix, movie parties, instant message, on demand, cross chat, facebook, tweeter, videos, avatar market place, Last Fm, Zune Video and the list goes on and on...

But leave online multi-player as a standard feature by default..

Just criticising them when it doesn't favour Sony and countering with your own flawed arguments.