Free online play is great, i have a wii and ps3 and I'm really glad I don't have to play to online but at the same time I know it costs these companies a lot of money to keep up the servers.  What if instead of $50 a year they could reward people who are buying things from the online store.  They could make a deal where if you buy $100 (or something like that) worth of MS points you get a year gold membership.  That would ensure people are active in buying games, and MS will get a share of the money from 3rd party games and a bigger share from 1st party. 

Microsoft needs a price cut in its online.

I like the idea of a rewards system, but your take on it wouldn't work. Maybe your purchases could go to your rewards, and there will be many things you can cash out your reward points for, including Xbox Live Gold time, MS points, Netflix time, or even games themselves. I would also like the idea of a discount program similar to Gamestop's card. You buy in for a yearly subscription and maybe get in depth walkthroughs on Xbox Live for games and a 10% discount on anything you purchase in the Marketplace on your account.

I always thought Wii points should come packaged in with some Nintendo first party games. It would encourage consumers to buy the games new, and you would get a little extra value just for buying it.

That is what was cool about Grand Theft Auto.

well they shoud find a way to reward people that are putting money back into the network, rather than having them pay just as much as the guy that only has halo 3 and plays it every day for 3 years.

if you do that too much it starts to devalue the points though, it's a good idea to do if you're trying to sell a special edition of a game.  If they were to include points with the tin version of NSMB for example.  Perhaps they should include 1000 points when you buy the wii, that would encourage people to at least go to the wii shop channel once.

I don't spend fifty dollars a year on Xbox Live's Marketplace anyway. This would not benefit me.

Yea, I think packaging Wii points with the system is a great idea. You need to get your users to know it exists and how they can use it.

How about no ?

Why do you care about companies well being ? They need to provide as good stuff as possible in order to get our hard earned cash, no need to give it to them.

Especially when $100 is crapload of money when you think about spending it only on PSN games.

How about free online play? It worked for StarCraft for 11 years and counting, and that game still gets free updates, and is still better than every online game that has ever cost money.