Right on. $50 a year is a new game with discount, or two old games.

This is how Live should be:

Silver members Free                                  Gold Members paid subscribers

Online Mutiplayer                                         Online multiplayer

         .........                                                      Chat

         .........                                                   Cross Chat

         .........                                                   Text msg

         .........                                                   party  invite

         .........                                                    Facebook

         .........                                                    tweeter

         .........                                                     Last Fm

         .........                                                      Netflix

All I say is leave online mp for free for Silver members , And if you want to enjoy the whole experience you pay the fee..

If the extra features enhances the experience to play online for $50 a year, great for those who enjoy it. But for those looking just to pick up and play online without any of those features should be free for them, .

The best thing is to have options and there's non, you have no choise but to pay to play online on the Xbox.

A good option would be play online free without the added features that gold offers or pay a fee if you want to play online and enjoy the whole experience that gold offers..

Playing multiplayer online should not be a priviledge, it should be a standard feature for starters (Silver) but if you want the added luxury you have to upgrade to gold..

I have no complaints with Live at all its great but at least thats how it should've been.

An article written by God?

Yawn, I've seen this topic 100 times over.  If you don't like Live, don't pay for Live.  Not a hard concept.

This.  Even parents know you don't pay $50 for Live.

LOL @ Internet Posters, it's all so simple -

In real life people are not stupid, they see the PS3 play online they see the 360 play online, they then go and buy an Xbox Live subscription, it says it all really......

Take a look at the Official UK PS3 magazine around 3 weeks ago where they tried to play a 24 hour online marathon and see what even they think of the poor quality PSN network.....

And PS3 owners stop adding how much it would work out over 5 years, I.E PS3 gamepads cost double the price of the 360 one in Europe so how much more does that cost over 5 years.. And every non EA game will still be online in 5 years on the 360, hardly any game  on the PS3 will, (Devs have to run their own servers on the PS3 they don't on the 360) so how much will that cost in having to update to the latest version of the game or losing online altogther because third party devs shut down the servers.

Justin said:
Only suckers pay $50 a year for Live

JUSTIN IS -

Another example of someone who has no real world experience of the 360 ($50 LOL)  and dosen't relize his own consoles hidden costs..

People who write articles like this must not understand the basics of capitalism...

I have a Mount Blanc pen...the refills cost me $12, and the pen is listed for $395 on Amazon...So...is WHY do people pay this kinda price again? BTW, I didn't buy the pen, it was my wife's prize for being a great sales performer and I would have sold the damn thing, if it didn't have some meaning. My point is that PEOPLE value XBL...Halo 3 is the most played game online EVER...so M$ has every right to charge what they do...Wii sells for $249 (even if a price cut is coming), WHY?

No, its not. 6$/month.

And im not playing every day, every month. So its just fine to buy 3-months gold.
I got PS3, and a free demand that is good but feels like empty house after some hours with XBoX Live.

Greatness! Worth money to keep it up good with servers and stuff.

Damn. Didnt read so well right now. Forget my post.

Lol :d

i never understood paying a monthly fee for stuff like this.

someone once told me if you're going to pay a monthly fee for something you may as well join a porn site because you'll get more BANG for your buck. the funny thing is that i agree with them 100%.

I'm not playing for XBL I said that from the very start and I've kept to that promise. Though both have advantages over the other I enjoy being able to remote access my PS3 with my PSP from any hotspot and then stream my media, and having a web browser so I can watch videos (or hell get on twitter/favebook/netflix) on my big screen (mostly english sub anime but w/e)

Point being they're basically both similar services, you'll get faster downloads on XBL and the cross chat, but for someone that A) rarely talks while playing online and B) will just browse the web or do work while something is downloading it nulls out the advantages (even though you can download things as a silver member)