Greenburgs comments regarding price are simple. When you buy a 360 it will always be a 100$ less than a Ps3. The OP comments are laughable and are clearly trolling, but that's nothing new.

Rofl. It would be funny if they made crosschat part of gold and online play free. Then again I wouldn't be surprised if they did something stupid like that for PSN either. 100$ cheaper than PS3 means that 2 years into the 360's lifespan (provided it doesn't RROD or E47) it becomes equal expense.

Someone still fails to read the whole Greenberg interview, HW value is only the first of his three points and online is the third and pretends he was only talking about HW value, but he wasn't.
So, even if he didn't mean what most subscribers would like, it makes perfectly sense, both logically and economically (on buyers side, obviously), to stretch his words as I suggest and try to force him and his company.
Anyhow, a lot of enthusiastic Gold subscribers swear they're happy to pay for its extra features, so, again, if we trust them, putting basic online multplayer into Silver shouldn't hurt.