Poll: Should Xbox Live Be Free?

[Eagle Est1986]

Good afternoon all, I was just having an arguement on another forum about wether or not Xbox Live should be free. After being infuriated by the low intellect of my adversary, I decided to see what you guys think, seeing that the average IQ here is quite a bit higher.

Personally, I believe that it's time for Xbox Live to be made free, I could understand the price back when online play was still a novelty to console players, I was all too happy to pay it, back when Xbox Live was a nice community.
With the advent of this new generation of consoles though, every console has online capabilites and the 360 is the only one to charge you any money for it.
I can understand the arguement that you're really paying for all of the 'tidbits' surrounding Live, but my arguement is that Microsoft offer all of those things for free, to those with a silver subscription. So effectively, you're just paying to play in online multiplayer.

So if you're just paying for the multiplayer aspect, is it really worth it? I'd have to say no.
I've played on all three consoles online and I have to say, there's not really much difference between them, not on the core online multiplayer experience.
The Wii gives you a very simple and basic online experience but the system is sturdy enough and it's free.
Sony's PSNetwork is, I find, as good as Live. While the PS3 store isn't quite as fully stocked as the XBL Marketplace, that again is something that is free to silver subscribers, so you're not really paying for it anyway.

If I'm paying £40 a year, I expect Xbox Live to be a lag free zone in addition to having some killer features that the other two consoles can't offer. At the moment, I've found Xbox Live to be so laggy, that I have slowly been playing more and more of my online games exclusively on my PS3. Then of course there was the issue last Christmas, where I couldn't connect at all, my prime gaming time of the year was restricted to offline only play.

Personally, I want a bit more bang for my buck as far as Xbox Live is concerned and I think it's high time Microsoft delivered.

So, what do you guys think?

 

[Janus Vesta]

Xbox Live shouldn't be free because it costs money to run the servers and keep the maintenance. The have a few million customers worldwide and provide an excellent service. A price drop would be nice though.

 

[TheKbob]

I sold my Xbox 360 and play on my PC now,... but I still say Xbox Live was worth the money

 

[Some_Jackass]

I think its common sense to want something for free...but lets not forget, where theres a chance to profit, Microsoft will go for it...so unless XBox Live comes in dead last, things probably wont change...and Im talkin DEAD last, as in "more people are going online with their Dreamcasts more than XBox" kind of dead last...

 

[Goenitz]

Free, free, free...

 

[Drakstern]

No, it shouldn't.

Servers cost money.

 

[sirdiealot88]

If it was free then more people would use it more often, not saying theres a shortage of users. But most of guys are right, it's not cheap to run these sortta things - the quality would suffer heavily

 

[UPS Express]

I do not think that XBL should be free. Microsoft is providing us a service, that being online multiplayer, and they deserve to be compensated for it.

As for your argument that the other two main consoles both have free online multiplayer;
Even if they are just as good, if not better, and I hate to use a cliche, but if all the other consoles jump off a bridge, why should Microsoft?

 

[bubbaroark0451]

If Microsoft says it's free then it's free if not then thats their prerogative. You don't have to buy it. This is why we have a Free Market instead of BOLSHEVISM!

 

[j1-2themax]

One would think that, with all the advertising Microsoft seems to sell on XBox Live, they could run XBox Live on those profits alone. Everywhere you look, more advertising. Just saying.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

I see one advantage to players to making multiplayer-capable Live a paid service; if you're a jerk, and get banned for acting like a jerk, it's that much more expensive to create a new account to circumvent the ban. One or two alts at $7/month, maybe, but after six or seven we're talking about some serious disincentive here.

That's in addition to the server maintanance and other stuff.

-- Steve

 

[CatcherJJ]

Of course it should be free. But there are a lot of things in life that should be free but aren't and never will be. As long as people are still buying Live Subscriptions for $50/year, Microsoft will keep accepting that money.

 

[Eagle Est1986]

Even if they are just as good, if not better, and I hate to use a cliche, but if all the other consoles jump off a bridge, why should Microsoft?

Because eventually they'll start to lose customers. Don't you at least think that prehaps the price should be reduced to about half?

One would think that, with all the advertising Microsoft seems to sell on XBox Live, they could run XBox Live on those profits alone. Everywhere you look, more advertising. Just saying.

A very good point. There is an awful lot on there at the moment, I'm sure they sell that advertising space for a fair bit on it's own.

Also, what about multiplayer only games or games that focus heavily on multiplayer? Surely it shouldn't cost me the price of buying the game again, to have access to half of it (or all of it) for a year?

 

[Zombie_King]

I've had a 360 for a while, and scarrily enough, I don't have Live. Don't get me wrong, I have the cash, but I haven't looked at the manual and don't know how to connect? Could I get some help from a trained pro?

 

[TMAN10112]

I heard that a few older 360 games like lost planet are going to be avilable to play online for free even if your a silver member.

 

[Eagle Est1986]

I heard that a few older 360 games like lost planet are going to be avilable to play online for free even if your a silver member.

Really? Where did you hear that? That would at least be a step in the right direction....

 

[Jamash]

I don't think it should be free, as servers cost money.
Also it's not like it's very expensive. I bought a 13month Gold live card from E-Bay for £30, which works out at something like 7.5p a day... hardly breaking the bank. The power consumption of the 360 probably costs more than that.

 

[Shadow Tyrant]

So what if servers cost money. Microsoft is one of (If not the) the richest companies in the world. I think they can afford a few servers. And they make enough money off downloadable content, anyway. I shouldn't have to pay to give them money. And I'm sure if they added a "donate now" paypal link somewhere, people would do it.

 

[Donstheman]

I agree that it should be free, lets not forget that Nintendo and Sony also have a large server upkeep and they still manage to do so for free, so I dont see why Microsoft cant do it either.