Poll: Do you use paid Xbox Live?

[Arakasi]

I mean the paid service for online gaming, not making purchases or downloading patches.
I personally would occasionally use it if it were free, but fucked if I could be bothered paying for it. I would use it too sporadically for it to be worth my money.

I get the feeling that Xbox live is restricting a large amount of people from coming online, whereas they could merely clog the thing with ads and make it free. Or whatever Playstation does to make their service free.

If you feel I should add an option to the poll, I should be able to.

 

[Razentsu]

Only with a new game or when there's a cut price for the subscription.

 

[Sassafrass]

Yeah, I do when I can afford it. I use it often enough to justify the price, so why not?

 

[Juan Regular]

I´ve recently cancelled my subsription, mostly because they still plaster the XMB with more and more ads. That´s a practice I just can´t get behind. Plus I´ve pretty much given up on any form of multiplayer now.

 

[krazykidd]

Yeah i buy it every year . It's 4$ a month . I'm sorry , i'm not too poor to afford 4$ a month . It's well worth it in my opinion . And that's fairly cheap . I don't get why people say it's expensive but whatever . I spend more money than that on coffee .

 

[The_Lost_King]

They already clog the thing with adds. How could they clog even more in?

 

[daveman247]

Eh, £40 for the year doesnt exactly break the bank. i get my monies worth. Mostly for counterstrike and the odd times myself and others can coordinate to play something.

But i can see my use for it going waaaay up when i get round to getting halo 4 and borderlands 2 ^_^

 

[Shoggoth2588]

My console can't maintain an internet connection for long periods of time to begin with. Even when I could though, I don't think I used Gold for a full year. I had some fun when Reach came out but I was having almost constant connection problems with Halo 3 and Left 4 Dead. TF2 was also a lot of fun on Gold but considering online multiplayer is all I'm really getting for the ransom service, I remember being less than aggrieved when I finally decided to stop paying and just stick with Silver or rather, unplug my wireless router and marvel at how much faster my console's response time seems to have become (outside of games that is).

 

[Khinjarsi]

I don't play enough multiplayer/online games to really justify paying full whack for a subscription. I don't like paying by direct debit so my choice is to buy the cards, which is pointless since I'd end up wasting half of it over holidays when I don't have access to an Xbox. Everything else behind my reasoning is probably unrelated to the question.

 

[AngloDoom]

I simply can't get any new games or use Live without feeling guilty because I'm not living in a villa exactly where I want to be doing exactly what I want to do.

I hope I break out of this habit soon, I've only just completed Mass Effect 2 and only because a friend took pity on me and let me borrow his D=

 

[Idlemessiah]

I do when I have a stable internet connection. When I was at university I had Live for 4 years, since I lived in a city with fast internet speeds.

Now I live back with my parents on the edge of a poxy little nowhere town where the phone lines can barely support conversation let alone a 4mbps connection.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

No, I never have paid for xbox live and I never will. I will not pay for the privilege of playing a game I own, that I bought new, with my own internet that I pay for, when it uses a P2P system in games. There is no argument that anyone can make that will convince; that paying the amount it is no matter how small(to you) it may be that it is worth it.

 

[Saulkar]

I have been repeatedly told that the free services already offered with the silver subscription consume more money to maintain than the peer to peer middle man thingy that you pay for. If this is true then fucked if I am using it.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

I pay for it and have never regretted it. I have had more than my moneys worth in entertainment, new friends and convenience. I don't use it as much as I did in the Halo 3 times but now Halo 4 is out hopefully it will change for at least a while.

EDIT: Whats the problem with the adds? I barely even notice them and I am never on the dashboard anyway. The odd times that I do notice them I am normally glad I did because they can be advertising a free or cheap game/DLC that I want.

 

[Varis]

I have paid for it, and I would again, had I time to play on it. Too busy playing MMO's on my PC

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Yes, I do, and I've never felt the cost in any way to be a factor. My broadband package costs more per month than XBL costs per year, so in the grand scheme of things it really is a token amount.

When you then place the higher security of XBL next to, say, the free-to-play PSN I reckon £3 a month is a worthwhile investment not to have my details nicked. People often forget that part (although admittedly not all) of the subscription fee goes towards XBL security measures, so I reckon £35 a year is worth it. And for comparison, I pay £45 a year (£10 more, for those slow on the uptake) for my PC Internet security, so it's not even like XBL is more expensive than PC gaming...

 

[Batou667]

Yes, I pay for yearly Live subscriptions, currently in my second year. £40 a year works out about 11p a day - that's absolute bugger-all in the big scheme of things.

Compare that to the £20-odd I pay per month just for the privilege of having an internet connection at all. Or if we really want to get depressing, compare it to an average quarterly utilities bill, or my rent.

Xbox Live is really the least of my worries. I'd be pissed off if they raised the price, but for a (mostly) good service that provides access to online gaming, playable demos, party chat and the occasional free game, I'm really quite happy.

 

[FunKing]

I use it if i have it. I usually get cards from my gf or my parents around Cristmas time, or i'll grab a subscription if there's a deal going on. Mostly i'm on my PS3 anyways so it's been a while since i've had a gold account. What pisses me off about it though is you have to pay for the gold account, and pay for your netflix account just to watch netflix (or hulu or whatever). I just don't see why they have to charge you so you can use another service your already paying for. Thank the maker for PS3