You just got owned. Time to shut your yap before you embarradd yourself some more?

I am a very big fan of Xbox 360.  I love my 360.  I had absolutely zero plans to buy a PS3 because I didn't think the price drop would actually be a permanent one on the new redesign and that didn't sound very promising for the platform.  But the price drop did happen on the Slim, and that changed the whole situation, at least in my mind. 

Now that I have both consoles, it's nice to be able to look at both objectively.  And what I've come up with is that Microsoft needs to think of a way to keep people thinking they need to pay for Xbox Live.  Again, I will mention that I literally JUST renewed my Gold membership for the next year.  I have too many friends and family members with 360s that want to play online and don't have PS3s, so for that, I will stay a member.  Next year may be another story, who knows?  What I'm saying is that even the stuff MS hasn't added yet can pretty much already be done on the PS3 for free.  Granted, Facebook, Twitter, and Last.FM will probably be much better streamlined for a console setting than they are on the PS3's browser, so the 360 will have the advantage as far as format.

And people DO care about this other than PS3 owners.  When I told my wife I was going to buy a PS3, she said, "Oh no, how much is THAT going to cost per year?"  She was absolutely shocked when I told her it was all free.  In fact, every time she sees me doing something on PSN, she asks, "How much did you have to pay for that?"  99.99% of the time, my answer is, "Nothing."  She was also shocked that the wireless was built in and that it could stream media just as well as the 360.  (Though the 360 wins hands down there because it's a Media Center Extender.)

As far as your "more features" comment-----don't know about that.  I think pound for pound, it probably evens out.  But I still maintain that you get a lot more free video content on PSN than you do on the 360.  I would kill for NXE to have some free 1080p video of ANYTHING.  Even Major's Minute for crying out loud.  We buy these consoles to play on our HD TVs, so it's really nice to have some HD video content to browse through.

Really, I'm not trying to knock one and hate on the other.  Microsoft is really the king of online console gaming--they have done a really good job of establishing Xbox Live and it works very very well.  All I'm saying is that they need to get on their horses and do something.  At the beginning of the generation it was easy to explain why you would pay for Live.  Now it's a little harder.  I had a friend at work recently ask me if he should buy a 360 Elite or a PS3 Slim.  He knew I was a big 360 fan but had heard about the price drop, and he wanted his console to have a hard drive.  Now, what am I supposed to say to that guy.  If you compare the 360 Elite at $299 and the PS3 at $299, would it have really been fair to my friend for me to tell him to get a 360?  Think before you answer that.  Throw away the fanboy stuff and really really think about it.  When you buy a PS3 and take it out of the box, you are ready to go.  There are no costly add ons aside from an extra controller if you want one.  Chances are you already have a bluetooth headset.  And not to mention the BluRay thing, which can NO LONGER be discarded as a trivial add on.  The public has latched on to BluRay.  It's here to stay.  And it's awesome. 

All I'm trying to say is that the game has now changed.  You simply can't deny it.  You don't have to buy a PS3, but if you're Microsoft, you can't shrug it off any longer just because it's 8 million units behind.  I think that situation is going to change quicker than people think.

I am a very big fan of Xbox 360.  I love my 360.  I had absolutely zero plans to buy a PS3 because I didn't think the price drop would actually be a permanent one on the new redesign and that didn't sound very promising for the platform.  But the price drop did happen on the Slim, and that changed the whole situation, at least in my mind. 

Now that I have both consoles, it's nice to be able to look at both objectively.  And what I've come up with is that Microsoft needs to think of a way to keep people thinking they need to pay for Xbox Live.  Again, I will mention that I literally JUST renewed my Gold membership for the next year.  I have too many friends and family members with 360s that want to play online and don't have PS3s, so for that, I will stay a member.  Next year may be another story, who knows?  What I'm saying is that even the stuff MS hasn't added yet can pretty much already be done on the PS3 for free.  Granted, Facebook, Twitter, and Last.FM will probably be much better streamlined for a console setting than they are on the PS3's browser, so the 360 will have the advantage as far as format.

And people DO care about this other than PS3 owners.  When I told my wife I was going to buy a PS3, she said, "Oh no, how much is THAT going to cost per year?"  She was absolutely shocked when I told her it was all free.  In fact, every time she sees me doing something on PSN, she asks, "How much did you have to pay for that?"  99.99% of the time, my answer is, "Nothing."  She was also shocked that the wireless was built in and that it could stream media just as well as the 360.  (Though the 360 wins hands down there because it's a Media Center Extender.)

As far as your "more features" comment-----don't know about that.  I think pound for pound, it probably evens out.  But I still maintain that you get a lot more free video content on PSN than you do on the 360.  I would kill for NXE to have some free 1080p video of ANYTHING.  Even Major's Minute for crying out loud.  We buy these consoles to play on our HD TVs, so it's really nice to have some HD video content to browse through.

Really, I'm not trying to knock one and hate on the other.  Microsoft is really the king of online console gaming--they have done a really good job of establishing Xbox Live and it works very very well.  All I'm saying is that they need to get on their horses and do something.  At the beginning of the generation it was easy to explain why you would pay for Live.  Now it's a little harder.  I had a friend at work recently ask me if he should buy a 360 Elite or a PS3 Slim.  He knew I was a big 360 fan but had heard about the price drop, and he wanted his console to have a hard drive.  Now, what am I supposed to say to that guy.  If you compare the 360 Elite at $299 and the PS3 at $299, would it have really been fair to my friend for me to tell him to get a 360?  Think before you answer that.  Throw away the fanboy stuff and really really think about it.  When you buy a PS3 and take it out of the box, you are ready to go.  There are no costly add ons aside from an extra controller if you want one.  Chances are you already have a bluetooth headset.  And not to mention the BluRay thing, which can NO LONGER be discarded as a trivial add on.  The public has latched on to BluRay.  It's here to stay.  And it's awesome. 

All I'm trying to say is that the game has now changed.  You simply can't deny it.  You don't have to buy a PS3, but if you're Microsoft, you can't shrug it off any longer just because it's 8 million units behind.  I think that situation is going to change quicker than people think.

Microsoft hasn't shrugged off any competitor this gen. The game has changed 4-5 times already this gen. Have you been paying attention?

For you to say that you don't know about 360 having more features is suspect considering every PSN fan on here has conceded that they wish they had cross game chat which supersedes alot of PSN's minor exclusive features. BTW, the public has not latched onto Blu-Ray...it's still a niche feature. I rarely hear of an Xbox gamer saying that they wish they had a feature from PSN.

Finally, all I can say is that we will all see after the holiday season who's gameplan has worked better  Good luck!