its only 50 dollors a year, if you buy a whole year, if you go monthly, or every 3 months, its much much more expensive

All I want to do is play the games I paid for online for free. Microsoft nor third parties are providing dedicated servers for me to play on, so from the perspective of someone who just wants to play online, I fail to see why p2p online warrants an annual free. Heck, every other major platform has free online games with dedicated servers. All this fun stuff you guys are mentioning (cross game chatting, netflix, etc) should be gold only paid features. I just see no good reason to pay microsoft to use my own internet connection.

The value added argument that I keep hearing from x360 owners is getting old.

Exactly what I've been trying to say all thread long.

I don't seem to be getting through so i'll give up.

But then you buy wow and have to pay...

I don't seem to be getting through either.
lets both give it up.

maybe if you made a good arguement...

That's what I've been trying to get through here, I know XBL has cool features but why include online multiplayer in it?  why online multiplayer is optional?  thats separating the XBL userbase from Silver and gold ..

A perfect XBL world would be Silver and Gold accounts play together.

Its only about online gaming I'm talking about here its not about the superior extra features XBL Gold offers.

It's about Silver members getting to play online as default ?..

And what about Gold members "only" get to play online with all the extra bells and whistle?..

Silver members                                               Gold members

.......                                                                 chat

.......                                                                instant mgs

.......                                                                cross chat

.......                                                                 netflix

.......                                                                share movies

.......                                                                tweeter

.......                                                                facebook

.......                                                                 demos

online gaming                                                online gaming.

This way it still make Gold accounts more appealing.

I't doesn't make sense I buy a $60+ game, example: Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and the online multiplayer is not included/optional when the PS3, PC and Wii has it as the standard ..

I will have to renew my Gold account but not for the extra features (which for me are being forced upon me) but only to play online..

You can talk.

Well thats all you do just not successfully.

Stop trolling.

Should be like Yahoo games. Everyone can join but only the premium members can upload pictures. play in the tourneys. ect ect

So FFXI can be played with only a Silver account?  I did in fact look around for more than 2 minutes for that information (about 5) and didn't find it -- I somehow overlooked the beginning of the Wikipedia article and I don't think it's mentioned in any of the subsequent sections where I was looking.  "... as has been said many times before"?  I'm sure it has been mentioned many times among all the people on this planet in all of history, but not to me (that I recall) and not in this conversation. 

It's precisely because it's only associated with one game that it's different.  WoW is what it is:  pay to play.  CoD4 is a game that you can play SP for free; or MP for free (IIRC it has no splitscreen but I assume it can do LAN); but to go online, whoops you need Gold.  Halo 3, etc. etc., same deal.  The paying is not for the game itself -- and the entire game -- as in WoW, but for the singular experience of online multiplayer.  When viewed in the context of all other major platforms being free for the equivalent service, it seems to us as though our online MP experience is being held hostage by MS. 

As for Qore -- [edit:  never mind, found where you mentioned it] I don't think it's actually relevant, because those things are not even remotely comparable in importance to MP as far as gaming goes, while such an argument could be made for demos. 

Besides, I can respond to all the stuff you mentioned:  (1) game vids, interviews -- are you saying that other game vids for the same games are not available to the general public?  These things cost money to put together, and it's extra content that goes to people willing to pay (more than the "free competition" is likely to disperse).  Any game that gets this stuff on Qore has more than enough info out there for free for gamers to make an informed decision anyway, so it's not a critical component like online MP; (2) demos -- as I dicovered you yourself said at one point, these demos are given out for free after a while anyway -- some people just feel the desire to pay for the privilege of early access.  It's not at all critical or comparable to online MP that you can NEVER EVER get the same exact access to for free on XBL; (3) beta access -- this is simply early access all over again.  If I could wait 6 months after a game is released for the 360 and then play online on my Silver account, I would quit bitching.  (Well, to be honest, I'd say 90-95% chance, not 100%.)

In point of fact, I see Qore as an even worse ripoff than Gold, but unlike Gold it is much more optional.  Fat Princess would be trash without online MP.  Many games are practically built around it and the fact that MS holds 360 gamers' online game experiences ransom is what makes me hate Gold and not Qore.  I had a 1-year Gold subscription that came with my 360; I had been hoping that MS would see the light by the time it expired, but no such luck -- so I let it expire and haven't looked back.

(And of course this means that any game like COD4 is going to be the PS3 version for me.  So MS has not only not made money from me by Gold, it has actually lost money by pushing me to Sony for any game where online MP matters to me.)

Its not worth it.