Xbox live price going up !

Im not surprised and nor am I really bothered by it. I hardly play online anyway.

 

The yearly price seems to be the monthly price * 12 in Canada, or at least that's what I've noticed. I bought a 12 month card on sale, but got screwed over by my renewal because I couldn't figure out how to cancel the automatic renewal from my credit card. That REALLY pissed me off.

 

Don't know anyone in the states? I just buy mine from amazon.com and ship them to my sister. She just e-mails me the code. I think I'm good until 2012... there's a 36 month limit to the subscription, and I got the 13 month cards early last year for ~$35-40 CAD after conversion.

You did eventually find out how to turn off auto-renewal, right? I just log into xbox.com for all that stuff.

 

To be fair, £4.99 in 2002 is the equivalent of £5.68 today, UK inflation adjusted.

 

I don't like the price hike either but come on...it's an increase of less than $1 per month...

 

Wow, I would have they thought the price would get dropped not raised!

I don't care for the features it gives I just want to play online!! I only have one 360 game left that I ever cared for FNR3 and I cant play it without paying.FNR3 is the only game I ever got 2 versions of because PSN allows free online.

I may as well just trade in my 360 as I will never pay again and without online it just collects dust.

 

I don't like the price increase, but I suppose it was inevitable. It's a good thing I'm locked in until mid 2012, thanks to jumping on 4 of those $30 12-month live deals two years ago.

Now if only they'd reveal the ESPN and Hulu features already...

 

The email I got says "$39.99" if I renew now --- a $20.00 savings.
I will probably renew since my subscription expires in September anyway.

 

I'm going to look at this from 2 points of view...

1) From a personal point of view it sucks major ass. Not real happy about it at all. I don't play a lot online, but it's nice to know I have it if & when I do want to play. Plus, it's necessary for my Netflix subscription. I could probably do without Gold for the rest of the services though. For my family it's going to be real expensive, but the current 'lock it down' pricing will ease the pain. The upcoming Family Membership will help a lot too.

According to Kotaku, you'll be able to take existing Gold accounts and upgrade them to the Family subscription. The total value of your combined accounts will determine how much, if any, you'll be required to pay in order to upgrade to the Family Plan. Any credit more than the required $99/yr fee will extend your subscription. So you could go ahead and stack up Gold subscriptions now and upgrade to the Family Plan in November and have enough paid for a family of 4 to last a year or more. I'll definitely be upgrading to the family plan since my son is playing lots of Halo online. The wife is starting to get interested in online gaming too and with Kinect coming I'm sure I'll see her using it more & more.

When you look at it that way, it's a little easier to swallow, but it still pisses me off.

2) From a business/industry point of view, it makes pretty good sense for Microsoft. Xbox Live Gold has morphed into more than just an online multiplayer service. The amount of services they are including now versus what they included back in 2002 for the same $50 is insane. You kind of think they would have bumped it up sooner. Forbes has pretty good blog article on the business end...

http://blogs.forbes.com/oliverchiang/2010/08/30/microsoft-raises-price-for-xbox-live-gold-membership

I think you could make the argument that if Sony hadn't launched PSN+ at $50 we wouldn't be talking about a price hike. Until PSN+ has _feature_ parity with Live Gold I'm sure you're going to keep seeing Microsoft trumpeting the value of all the services you get with a paid subscription. The upcoming ESPN3 and Hulu+ services are a great addition & value for being a member. Even if you looked just at the addition of ESPN3, there's a strong argument to be made that it's definitely worth an extra $10 a _YEAR_.

I agree that a price hike in the middle of this economy is insane, but Microsoft has to make money too. I've been seeing similar complaints at the county courthouse where I work with regards to a few property values going up. The problem where we are is that property values were already under-valued for years. The State just couldn't put off increasing properties values any longer. They're banking on the belief that the economy will only get better from here on out. So they're thinking that after 1 year of complaints, people will forget about it and accept it. And I could say the exact same thing about these Live Gold prices. Come November 2011, I'm sure not many people will be complaining and Microsoft will have just as many if not more subscribers.

The one side of this story that I haven't seen anybody touch on, is what do the publishers think about it? Probably pisses them off too. This might be another reason why we're hearing more & more about
'Project $10' and other ways to get money from all those guys playing lots of MW2 online.

Tommy McClain

 

Not at all. The price hike has nothing to do with us/them. I am actually pretty indifferent about the affair.

I seriously doubt that PSN will swing your decision either way. You have your network of friends there, you have existing 360 games, you have invested your time in XBL, etc.

You're just trying to justify and accept the price hike. My sense is all of you will just follow along. It's too big a psychological and economical leap to switch to PS3. Some of you are looking forward to Kinect also.

 

I actually have more friends on psn. Or had I should say since I sold my ps3. The problem is that we have tried online gaming on psn and it's just not workable, especially if you are used to online on the other platform. And therein lies the rub, as long as psn stays so far behind live then Microsoft will be able to keep cranking up the price. I think most of us that game on live would love it for psn to catch up because that would make it harder for Microsoft to justify price increases. But alas after 5 years it hasn't happened, and it doesn't look like it will happen any time soon. Hence the green light to go $60/year.

 

That depends on what games you're playing. UC2 online multiplayer is a peach on PSN, easily as good as any XBL multiplayer experience. MW2 is just as good as well.
But then again that's the problem, since it varies from game to game.

 

I think a lot of people would choose inferior PSN for free over superior $60 XBL if given the chance.

 

Well yes but then we people don't always do rationale choices and finetune adhoc consuming behaviour to get one extra service later in few months.

 

But it shouldn't! And a lot of online gaming is just plain crap. I couldn't play Borderlands with my friends on my own account, so used a US account. I repeatedly get kicked from Age Of Booty. Ahhhh, I don't need to list the faults, we all know 'em! PSN is too poop for online gaming, and Sony are doing squat to address this as they chase 3D and arthouse movies and goodness knows what else.

 

Are you claiming that all 360 games are faultless though? From my understanding, Borderlands online is weak on all three platforms. Most of these multi-platform games have the exact same peer-to-peer netcode and/or region limitations, and if there are any differences at all, they have to be related to stuff that Live does or PSN doesn't, or Live does better before you can condemn PSN for them?

EDIT: For the record, there are plenty of things that I do like about Live online gaming - the inviting, showing who's also playing the game you've just started, stuff like that is just great. But each time I go and play online on Live, the actual online experience just isn't better. It's all up to the games and disappointingly many games on the 360 have crappy peer-to-peer code, and for me personally, the 360 has been more fiddly for online gaming almost every single time.

 

Well I haven't used Live so can't comment, beyond referencing the typical very positive feedback from frequent users. Clearly that code that's dependent on the game will vary and affect the experience, but PS3 has no system to party up and play, which Live! has. Regards Borderlands, voice chat worked on XB but not PS3, because Live! has a standard system. So yeah, netcode mught be buggy per game, but the overall experience of teaming up with friends online and playing together is lousy on PS3.

 

I'm in Australia and just got a wifi adapter for my 360 (it's great that the 360 S came along and caused prices of adapters to plummet).

What would be the cheapest option to get a 12 month live subscription?