Another interesting snippet from our interview with industry analyst Michael Pachter, was his prediction that Microsoft might introduce a tiered payment system to Xbox Live.

When asked how he thought Microsoft would react to Sony charging for premium services on the Playstation Network, he responded:

“I think that Xbox Live subscriptions will be tiered in the future, and expect a modest increase to the Gold subscription. It’s currently $50 per year for Gold, and the subscription includes online gaming, Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, Netflix, photo sharing, video chat, and a few other features.

“I could see Microsoft changing the Gold tier back to what it was (essentially online gaming and a few chat features), and charging more for a premium tier with the other features. My guess is that we’ll see Gold go to $60 per year, and the premium tier go to $100.”

Well, that prediction really puts us in the Christmas spirit. We certainly hope that Microsoft isn’t in a hurry to start charging more for its online service, but stranger things have happened.

http://www.criticalgamer.co.uk/2009/12/14/pachter-predicts-xbox-live-tiered-payments/

Good news for 360 owners. No increased price for you guys.

lol, probably true.  i really can't imagine MS taking away features from gold, maybe a premium with a completely different feature set then we see now is possible like with sony is doing.  i also don't see MS raising prices mid-generation; a price hike would come with their next generation imo.

What's this dude's batting average on these predictions?

Should anyone be taking notice of these?

There was a Kotaku article that scored him at around 60%. However, the predictions he got right were usually the obvious ones.

These analysis usually do not come out of thin air. There are some patterns out there that he and his firm have tracked that drew him to this conclusion.

Is he accurate? Anybody's guess. He's hit and miss. Sometimes I think stuff like this gets out as an unscientific way of gauging public reaction to the possibility of such a thing. We all know its going to be overwhelmingly negative, but sometimes it has to happen this way for the suits to be convinced of it.

For the record, if I was to pay $100 annually for an XBL account, it would have to offer a TON more than what they offer now. I personally don't think it'll happen. I'd expect a subscription model for PSN before this.

I can't think of a better way for Microsoft to sell PS3's than to raise the subscription fee's.

To be fair $50 isn't what it was worth 4 years ago. I fully expect XBL to go up when the next Xbox comes out

You people who want to pay for live don't get it, Microsoft doesn't need to charge for gaming, they make plenty enough selling DLC's, movies, royalties from Netflix, music and Avatar stuff not to mention the ad's for Toyota and McDonalds and everything else.

They don't need to charge for live, but when has Microsoft ever been a company that doesn't charge for everything and anything they think people will pay for. And as long as people want to pay for it they will most certainly charge for it.

Around 15 million people pay for live, those are not updated figures either, so they get around $750 million in revenue at least. Their balance sheets clearly don't reflect this ...