I agree with your thread NJ5 (and I'm happy you mentioned your stance towards Sony, but please choose Xbox in next gen too lol).

Also, paying through credit card or buying value cards I think feels cumbersome for some people. Kids don't want to do that, they want no hazzle, they want their online gaming to work all the time without subscriptions and stuff. At least that's how I feel.

MS should make Xbox Live and keep it free for as long as Sony online is keeping their service free. It's very important that we stay competitive until the end of this generation.

everyone knows that LIVE isnt worth money anymore, PSN offers everything accept cross game chat, but it has HOME, VidZone and a Video store awith alot more films then live does. i was going to buy a new 360 but this is one thing that is holding me back, it doesnt even have wi-fi built in so i have to buy a thing for £60 on top! my ipod has Wi-Fi FFS! im not fan-boying all over this thread this has been brought up in a discussion so im commenting on the worth of LIVE

next gen when i buy Xbox 3 online being Free is a 'MUST' or i wont buy it, i already have to pay for enough everymonth lol

To the first:

Not everyone who games on PC plays MMOs. And the difference with MMOs is that they require the extra money to support the servers. If MS offered dedicated servers it wouldn't be such an issue, but as it is, we can get online and play games like Left 4 Dead or Counterstrike: Source, on dedicated servers and for free and with more people playing on a single map than any 360 game has offered in the past or present.

I'm also not sure why you bring up price. Most people need a PC in there home anyway, really its just $200-300 to get a PC up to spec to last a gen or longer. And on the console cost issue, it's the company's poor business decisions that get them into the problems they're in and forces them to charge for services that should be free. Both MS and Sony have lost billions of dollars following this stupid model loss model. MS, whilst profiting now, still haven't made back the money they've lost so far on 360 (let alone X-box 1).

To the second:

But PSN is quickly catching up which is why the issue has been raised now. And for people that spend loads on games AND game heavily online its not much of an issue. The original thread was about if the cost was holding back the 360. As someone who only games online casually, paying for something I can get free elsewhere is stupid. Why would I want to pay to play just a few hours a month? And what about people that don't buy that many games a year? If you could still play online for free with Silver, it wouldn't be an issue.

*Yawn*

Another day, another version of an "Xbox Live Sucks!" thread. How shocking...

Another day, another content-less post which people just should skip as line noise.

Oh you mean like yours, or are you referring to your whole thread?

I don't know if MS has any deals with external clients, and I am not even sure if they should give money to them for their own dedicated servers.  If MS thought dedicated servers were necessary to the backbone of their service, they obviously would offer them.  But they figured a scalable architecture would be best for a platform wide offering.  And I tend to agree with this sentiment. 

I also enjoy the fact that MS offers platform wide services such as parties and invites.  Me and my buds will join up in parties and jump from game to game with ease.  The party system also integrates very well with the matchmaking system.  So we go from game to game and just have a blast.  It is this simplicity, reliability, and ubiquity that I enjoy about Live.  Sit on my couch and play online games with my friends.

Player-hosted servers are only scalable from MS's cost perspective, as they don't need to spend a lot of money on servers for more players. The match making servers are an expense, but they pale in comparison to the bandwidth and CPU power that a game server needs.

For actual game-playing (the core function of online gaming), player-hosted servers are not scalable, which is why many 360 games support less simultaneous players than PC games.

personally the only feature that xbl has that i like is cross game chat something that psn will hopefully get in the near future. Other than that i never understood the reason to pay for the service. I never cared for netflix that i can also use netflix on my pc and now its available on the ps3 so why pay for gold to get netflix when you can get it free somewhere else? facebook and twitter i have a pc for that plus i could also just use the free ps3 web browser to do facebook and twitter but i really dont do that because i bought a console to game not to do twitter i have a pc for that (pc also satisfies my gaming needs to :). Its very hilarious how i will hear people telling me that psn is laggy yet so far ive played games like resistance 1 and 2, killzone2, warhawk, socom with little to no lag at all (well socom started off kinda slow but now its pretty smooth) but with games like gears ive lagged 10 times more than i did with any game on psn or pc, even halo3 gets laggy from time to time.

and what games on the 360 even use dedicated servers?

So do you have an idea on how many servers are necessary for 2 million concurrent gamers where 30% might be looking for matches at once?

I was speaking of scalability for the ability to handle an expanding user base in a more efficient manner.  Handling 2 million concurrent players in CoD MW2 would be a hell of a task(and hella expensive) using only dedicated servers.