Poll: Should Xbox Live Be Free?

[KSarty]

Nope. It shouldn't. The money goes towards the servers. PSN is free, therefore Sony doesn't use their money for universal servers. Instead every company that releases a game which features online has to take care of their own servers. Some companies messed up their servers. Take CoD 4 on the PS3 as an example. Then, when the company feels that their tired of wasting money on their server if no one is playing the game, they cut online. It's disappointing really. Everyone needs to stop bitching about the price. It's only 50 dollars a year and you can't really argue that you're not getting your monies worth.

But Microsoft still cuts online for games that aren't being played, so your point there is void. Also with the cost of add-ons and Live since the launch of the 360, you've already made up more than the difference in cost for the PS3, yet the price of the PS3 is always what people condemn it for most. $50 a year adds up.

 

[Gyrefalcon]

Let's see.
I pay for the system.
I pay for the game.
I pay to play said game online.
I pay for any additional content for said game.
I then have to pay to have alternate avatars or friends play.

I think the charge should be per machine not per person. I also think it should be rated in minutes of play rather than fee/month.

Some of the stupid games put out only let you save one game on an avatar. To keep from erasing a game, I have to create another avatar and put a save there. If I want to access both online, I then have to pay for 2 people even if I'm only one person. And only 4 people can play at the same time at most so all the extra money thrown at the other profiles are a waste.

Now then, I got my X-Box 360 and wanted to play online with my friends who did not have X-Boxes yet and were looking to see if the system would be worth getting. As soon as we learned we couldn't play online unless we coughed up $10-$20 a person so they could all play once during a month, they decided to get other systems or to stay with their old ones. Only 2 out of 20 friends have X-Box 360's now, and at least one of those had their system before me.

And why would parents want to pay $40/month so their 2 kids could play together when they already coughed up money for the game and the system? If the fees were per machine, they could both play. And they could show their friends who might then want to get one of their own. This little trick of theirs is backfiring. They just don't know it yet.