Hiruu...You my friend have are strong within the WIN!

Becuase not everyone has or plays games on PC....So paying a few some loose change a month for XBL Gold is nothing...

Since when do you have to pay to get an Update?....IF you mean new content...take that up with Valve not XBL...Even if you were a silver member and Valve were to charge you for content..that/s how it would be...L4D content was free on XBL....Really... it was And since you would be able to get them even with out Gold that would make the "you got to pay for  L4D content on XBL" a misinformed statement...I did not pay for L4d DLC...Now...the Upcoming DLC....Well..Valve wants money for it...they bet everything on Green and don't plan to look back...and as to why PC stuff is free....I say it's how MS keeps other OS's behind them in user base

Remember about 10-15 years ago...Paid expansion was the ONLY way to get more content, then...there was an explosion of the modding community on the PC. First on the individual level, then in packs, and some people did some really impressive stuff...and it was almost an audition for some...and then it became REALLY bad to push out DLC. Everybody felt this stuff had to be free...so my question is WTF sense does that make? How the hell are the companies suppose to pay people who are working on the new DLC? with fan love??? Horse Armor for sale sucks, but expecting a serious addition your gaming experience is ridiculous. MMO can add major content in between expansions because they charge a monthly fee…but standalone games need something to pay the bills and keep the lights on.

I will explain why I have no problem paying for Live. There are mainly two reasons.

Matchmaking - The Live infrastructure is based mainly on the idea of matchmaking. The system handles all game's requests to place a player into an online match with other players via a set of criteria. Latency, skill, etc. The TrueSkill ranking system that MS developed is a system wide ranking system that developers can leverage to enhance a gamer's online experience through gaming with comparatively skilled players. The main reason I love matchmaking is the idea of having a match. Team vs team. No jump ins. You are in a lobby with the team you know you are going to finish the match against. The party system also lends itself very well to this sort of play as you can actually form a 'team' of people and play against other 'teams' of people after every match. This is instead of playing against a randomly churning set of people that you get with the vast majority of dedicated servers based online games. The vast majority of my game time is with a party of 3 or 4 people as we hop from game to game(CoD4, Halo3, Battlefield 1943, L4D, etc. Even though several of the games I mentioned do not support matchmaking, they still offer decent online). MS even offers every developer for the system the ability to tap into their matchmaking infrastructure. XNA games included. You can browse through the XNA API on MSDN right now, if you are interested in how their system works(at least for XNA games). So their matchmaking infrastructure has to be able to handle a rather large set of matchmaking requests at any given point and be able to successfully scale to accommodate any new games developed for the system. While this is not particularly new in the world of computing, it is definitely one of the largest infrastructures for online gaming.

Ubiquity - Another very nice thing about Live(and you don't have to pay for this) is that the feature set was pretty much set in stone from the very beginning(at least since the beginning of the 360). You have 1 identity that is used throughout ALL games developed for the system. Developers are required to support certain things(achievements,etc.) and you can be rest assured that every game released for the system will comply with them. Headphones are very common and it is rare to play online without hearing someone speak(Battlefield 1943 is like a deserted town though). Some do not like this, I however, enjoy communicating with people. On the rare occasion that someone annoys me, I mute them. Other platforms seem like they have a haphazard collection of games that utilize online services. It isn't cohesive to the point where Live is. I believe this is due to the Gamertag being the glue that holds them all together. It is like having a character in an RPG that I can bring to different games. This might just be my own unique thoughts about this, but there it is.

So I guess it is the cohesiveness of Live that I enjoy playing with. Some don't think it is worth paying money for, and I can definitely see that sentiment. But personally, and I have a rather nice amount of disposable income, the very small fee is barely noticeable. Oh and I REALLY enjoy Halo 3. One of the best online experiences I have had since Tribes.

^^Excellent post.  Too bad all the haters are just gonna ignore it since it has reasoning in it, and keep blowing the same damn out of tune song of theirs...

I didn't say L4D updates, I said TF2 updates, which people had to pay for on the 360. Same goes for the "DLC" as you call it. Valve has been outputing content without requireing payment for it long before it even started releasing stuff on the 360. There was a huge argument between them and MS as to why they had to pay for content updates, if you don't remember, so don't start bvullshitting me. L4D has not had a content update yet, this upcoming campaign is what's new.

Also MS does not help out indie programmers, Steam and other easy to distribute services help them out. And don't kid yourself, LIVE is free for windwos because no one would bother paying to play online unless it was an MMO. And I can't believe people are still comparing a game (WoW, Lineage, any other MMO) with a service that allows you to play online (LIVE). The two are utterly different.

@heru

Because if it can be done for free, why not make it so? Obviously it can be done for free, and if it could be done for free imagine those companies making people pay for those same mods. How do you think that will fly. Go back to having an alternative to Google that required payment. Would you even bother with it?

It is what it is...It all comes down to who games on PC and who Does not..I don't play on PC (And I did btw Lineage 2 for a long time and paid 15$ to play a game I had alreay purchased..That's your point right?)...I don't mind shelling out five bucks to keep a developer from working on a negative budget....You get what you pay for....that's it...it's seems you like TF2 so your all over this...Live is not charging you for TF2 Valve is...why do you think PC devs are making so many 360 games....They can now make money....and not have to worry about pirates(That much and no where near as much) On PC....A game comes out and is hacked within hours...Example: Guitar Hero 3...A friend got it on PC.....Within five mins of getting it in the house..we had the game running with no CD in the drive and installed on a different PC and Online enabled....Two things the game did not support.....Give it a Rest....PC is what it is...and MS has alot to do with that...you love PC and don't think LIve is worth it...We understand....You atleast are providing a decent argument with the Valve games....The rest of the people here with there "it should be free becuase I don't want to pay"...need to keep it moving ONCE AGAIN Live is not chargin you for DLC....The game devs are...

And your wrong by the way L4D...Survival MODE? you missed that one..with the new campaigns?

And as far as Indie devs go...Atleast MS does not charge them to have their game up on their service like others do....

EDIT: DLC by defenition is Downloadable Content..which is what and Update on PC would be.....

I would just like to point out that Quake Live will start having a premium membership because the ad revenue was apparently not enough to recuperate the cost of running servers. The premium membership is not required to play, but it gives members the ability to 'rent' private server time for them and their friends. This is a good example of a company not wanting to eat the cost of running servers. Especially since they get no revenue from purchase since the game is free.

http://xbox.joystiq.com/2008/08/22/team-fortress-2-updates-on-360-this-year-for-a-price/

Yeah... it's all Valve who wants your money. Definitely. It's a service and that's what it is, it's not a game. As I said, i'd bet anything that if MMOs jumped on the consoles, you'd have to pay monthly anyhow (unless it was an MS/Sony one and they add it in free with the service, which would make it all worth paying for).

Just one more example, keep in mind Epic's UT franchise has seen ridiculous amounts of mod support and just overall support from Epic themselves back when they were on the PC. They even let people who didn't have the Collector's edition of UT2004 download a patch for free to make sure they had all the content that the CE did have. Here's what they had to say:

http://xbox.joystiq.com/2007/04/09/microsoft-wont-let-new-gow-maps-be-free/

And this is one of the greatest games for the Xbox as well....

I really don't know its the best out there but 50 dollars seems way too much I say 20 - 30 at max