Xbox Live should be Free

Allow me to explain why (Fortunately) the privilege of playing online on an Xbox 260 system is NOT free...

1)Everybody would have access to it, and our online haven we resort to for entertainment would be bombarded with an abundance of irritating, pesky little kids and general riff-raff, meaning more complaints and whinging on internet forums.

2)The quality and service would be pathetic because MicroSoft would have no motive to improve and fine-tune Live if they were giving it away free of charge.

3)MicroSoft would be unable to provide members with brilliant content and acessories because they would have a significant decrease of funds due to the loss of revenue from Xbox Live.

[QUOTE="Silentwarrior27"]Wow, seriosuly Xbox live breaks down to like 4$ a month. If you can't afford that then you shouldn't be on Xbox live anyway. Plus if it was free it would suck ass like the PSN. def_mode

lol, i laugh at people like you, for not understanding the point of this thread. Anyways, Ill explain.

The TC DID NOT say anything about how he cant afford $50 anually for XBL.

He is asking WHY we have to pay for XBL, P2P, no update etc. when Steam offers more and better for free.

wow they miss one update and people are up in arms. when you think about it thats just pathetic

I actually prefer the PS3's PC-style server browser interface over the 360's matchmaking service for most games. Of course I'm an old-school PC gamer.

Also, PS3 games have dedicated servers for most games, which means less lag than the 360's peer hosting - that can cause a lot of frustration when the host disconnects and everybody's booted.

ck02623

uh actually that doesnt happen a lot anymore as most games have it set up to where if the host drops out it selects the next best host so it keeps the gamer going

dispite what people think, i have both consoles, and yeah the service you get on xbox live is great, but is it really worth it? i mean you pay to play games 40 quid a year for us in the UK but they make you pay for everything else, i think maybe you should be able to rent a few High def movies for your 40 quid aswell i mean they dont update nearly as often as they should but it is a solid service.

People say the PSN network is rubbish or not as good as live at the minute they are right, but there has been a vast improvement in the service over the last year and its starting to shape up with loads of psn classics, and being able to download from any of the stores by setting up another account. also the online gaming is pretty solid, and i prefer the wallet system of the psn compared to MS rip off points system.i foresee the psn rivaling the Live service.

[QUOTE="ck02623"]

I actually prefer the PS3's PC-style server browser interface over the 360's matchmaking service for most games. Of course I'm an old-school PC gamer.

Also, PS3 games have dedicated servers for most games, which means less lag than the 360's peer hosting - that can cause a lot of frustration when the host disconnects and everybody's booted.

FUBAR24

uh actually that doesnt happen a lot anymore as most games have it set up to where if the host drops out it selects the next best host so it keeps the gamer going

uh actually it still does. Even if a new host is selected the game lags up for a few seconds. Tell me that's not annoying. Guess how many times that's happened to me on PSN: NONE.

Really it should :twisted:

Bettlejack

[QUOTE="def_mode"]

[QUOTE="Silentwarrior27"]Wow, seriosuly Xbox live breaks down to like 4$ a month. If you can't afford that then you shouldn't be on Xbox live anyway. Plus if it was free it would suck ass like the PSN. FUBAR24

lol, i laugh at people like you, for not understanding the point of this thread. Anyways, Ill explain.

The TC DID NOT say anything about how he cant afford $50 anually for XBL.

He is asking WHY we have to pay for XBL, P2P, no update etc. when Steam offers more and better for free.

wow they miss one update and people are up in arms. when you think about it thats just pathetic

Consider the fact that we're paying.

Really it should :twisted:

Bettlejack

Even if you had posted a good argument a bunch of aholes on these boards would jump all over you because they think one of the richest companies in the world isn't making enough money already. Everything on live costs money except trailers and demos and those are just promotions if they tried to charge for those that would be ridiculous. I will say this one more time here we go... playing online should be free, and everything else should be a perk that you get if you sign up for gold.

P.S. Please don't reply to this post with "If you cant afford 5 dollars a month for xbox live you shouldn't be on it" Its not about being able to afford it its that they shouldn't charge us in the first place. How much do you think they make off of Xbox Live? They have over 10 million users subscriptions are about $60 a year (hold on let me do the math here) hmmmm..... WTF!!! thats a lot of money do you think it even costs a small fraction of that to keep live running at its less than spectacular rate.

I don't complain about Xbox Live charging a fee, but I do think that if we're paying for a service to ultimately play multiplayer on the games we already payed $60 for which aint cheap, why not give us "Gold Members" exclusive content like maps etc for free (and im not talking about boring gamer pics and silly themes. Or maybe we could have a special section for Gold Members only that consist of free movie downloads for being a memeber for X amount of months.gamer082009

Yeah that wouldn't be bad, but again M$ is to greedy to do that. If they could M$ would hire people to go rob houses at gun point during the night but they're too greedy to pay the robbers to do so.

Seeing how im paying 69.99 a year for xbl, i see no problem in it costing this much, If it were free we'd be getting crappy features that the ps3 currently has. cannot check friends list in the middle of a game, you have to exit out....and so on.

When you think about it, its less than 10 dollars a month, you really need to find a job and stop complaining about it.

That's what I thought. Until yesterday my friend came to my complaining about some problems in psn network(although He's a hardcore Sony fan) he said he didn't mind to pay once a year for better service.But I say it's slightly to much I think they should cut prices.

[QUOTE="Bettlejack"]

Really it should :twisted:

julianwelton

Even if you had posted a good argument a bunch of aholes on these boards would jump all over you because they think one of the richest companies in the world isn't making enough money already. Everything on live costs money except trailers and demos and those are just promotions if they tried to charge for those that would be ridiculous. I will say this one more time here we go... playing online should be free, and everything else should be a perk that you get if you sign up for gold.

P.S. Please don't reply to this post with "If you cant afford 5 dollars a month for xbox live you shouldn't be on it" Its not about being able to afford it its that they shouldn't charge us in the first place. How much do you think they make off of Xbox Live? They have over 10 million users subscriptions are about $60 a year (hold on let me do the math here) hmmmm..... WTF!!! thats a lot of money do you think it even costs a small fraction of that to keep live running at its less than spectacular rate.

Well not exactly accurate. First off it's 10 million subscriptions. Not 10 million GOLD subscriptions. That number has never been leaked. And I highly doubt MS is making ANY money off XBL.

Server maintenance costs a fortune. More than you would think. Between that and upgrades and people monitoring XBL, and bandwidth costs for people d/ling demos and never buying the games, its costing them a fortune. The reason Pc's can get by for free a ton of times is because a ton of the content and mods are all user created. But then again most pc games are rampant with modders/hackers/cheaters. Unless its games like WoW which people are paying for. MS could never let that happen with XBL. They want to keep the fairplay and balance there as much as they can.

I own a ps3 and it pales compared to XBL. I've played on Dreamcast for free and it sucked. If you could have a free XBL with no friends lists, friends leaderboards or anything else would you want it?

I think the real deciding factor on what XBL is worth is when the new 2.4 upgrade comes out for PSN in June which supposedly will have a ton of upgrades.

I would rather pay.

But I don't like the pricing on all the things you can get from live. (Gamerpics etc.)

After they decided to skip the spring update I am starting to think it should be.

What they hell are we even paying for at this point?

limpbizkit818

What's $40 for 13 months anyway?

Just about everything has a cost these days. I've still got Gold for another year and I don't even think about it.

If you want free online play, then get a Playstation 3 and sign up for Playstation Network.

Trust me, you'll be back though. In my opinion, Xbox Live is much better than PSN. And yes, I have them both.

Matt-4542

He's right, you know. It's not like the PSN lags and stuff, it's just not as "user-friendly" as XBL.

I dont pay for it because

A: I mostly play single player games

and

B: when i do play multiplayer games then they are on the pc, and there the online in those games ive played is free, so i see no reason to pay for gold.

Xbox LIVE being free would be like free healthcare,

it would be very low quality.

Firex777x

so true

[QUOTE="julianwelton"][QUOTE="Bettlejack"]

Really it should :twisted:

strayzilla

Even if you had posted a good argument a bunch of aholes on these boards would jump all over you because they think one of the richest companies in the world isn't making enough money already. Everything on live costs money except trailers and demos and those are just promotions if they tried to charge for those that would be ridiculous. I will say this one more time here we go... playing online should be free, and everything else should be a perk that you get if you sign up for gold.

P.S. Please don't reply to this post with "If you cant afford 5 dollars a month for xbox live you shouldn't be on it" Its not about being able to afford it its that they shouldn't charge us in the first place. How much do you think they make off of Xbox Live? They have over 10 million users subscriptions are about $60 a year (hold on let me do the math here) hmmmm..... WTF!!! thats a lot of money do you think it even costs a small fraction of that to keep live running at its less than spectacular rate.

Well not exactly accurate. First off it's 10 million subscriptions. Not 10 million GOLD subscriptions. That number has never been leaked. And I highly doubt MS is making ANY money off XBL.

Server maintenance costs a fortune. More than you would think. Between that and upgrades and people monitoring XBL, and bandwidth costs for people d/ling demos and never buying the games, its costing them a fortune. The reason Pc's can get by for free a ton of times is because a ton of the content and mods are all user created. But then again most pc games are rampant with modders/hackers/cheaters. Unless its games like WoW which people are paying for. MS could never let that happen with XBL. They want to keep the fairplay and balance there as much as they can.

I own a ps3 and it pales compared to XBL. I've played on Dreamcast for free and it sucked. If you could have a free XBL with no friends lists, friends leaderboards or anything else would you want it?

I think the real deciding factor on what XBL is worth is when the new 2.4 upgrade comes out for PSN in June which supposedly will have a ton of upgrades.

Even if server maintenance costs a hell of a lot more than I think it does it still does not amount to a small fraction of what they're making off of Xbox Live. Lets just say there are only 9 million people with gold subscriptions (Even though I highly doubt there are a million people that have a 360 without gold) thats still a ridiculous amount of money. The PS3 is slowly getting more and more features similar to xbox live and I'm not saying its as good I'm just pointing that out. Like I said in my first post Online play should be free but videos, demos, themes, video marketplace, and etc. should be features that you get access to when you upgrade to gold.

$50 a year is a good deal for the service. Nothing can rival Xbox Live.

PSN is complete garbage that's why it's free. Any free service is always garbage.

Technicians are not going to work for nothing.

I like paying for it, imagine if it was free hundreds of thousands of more people just to lag everything upChampionoChumps

As long as i have to pay for something that doesn't bring me any profit at all, i soil on it.

Xbox gold = no profit to me. I buy the f..king game for 65$ with the taxes and i should still pay for PLAYING IT ???

Every1 is so into money that the world of economy turned to BS. Let's pay taxes because we're living !!!

1500$ a month, as a start !!

Have fun living !

WarAnakin

Except I think that as a gamer, XBL is a profit to me.

Meh its that time of the month for this topic.

I dont care if it has a fee or not. I dont have the time to game online to get it anually, so whatever. If I want to play games online, will go to my PC and game there on gaming systems like Steam - which has the Half Life games and mods - which is free and is a good system.

Xbox LIVE being free would be like free healthcare,

it would be very low quality.

Firex777x

lol dumb ass canada is very good quality health care.

back on topic. i think since XBL is such a success as they put it and has SOOOO many users. maybe they should lower the price a little bit. it cant hurt, can it?

There's a double edge sword to being Xbox LIVE being free. Primarily the servers being overloaded, and services becoming increadibly poor.

[QUOTE="ChampionoChumps"]I like paying for it, imagine if it was free hundreds of thousands of more people just to lag everything upSkaterM80

Cupcake you should change your name to fruitcake , because you don't have the slighest clue what you are talking about .

Canada has universal health care , but it isn't even average , much less great . Other than a select few places , people in Canada routinely wait 4-8 months just to see a doctor . That isn't even factoring in the fact that their facilities and doctors don't compare to most developed nations .

Next time you want to chime in , at least make sure you have a clue what you are talking about

Cupcake you should change your name to fruitcake , because you don't have the slighest clue what you are talking about .

Canada has universal health care , but it isn't even average , much less great . Other than a select few places , people in Canada routinely wait 4-8 months just to see a doctor . That isn't even factoring in the fact that their facilities and doctors don't compare to most developed nations .

Next time you want to chime in , at least make sure you have a clue what you are talking about

mackreki

Well as someone who is currently living In Canada I can say it's total BS about a 4-8 month wait to see a dcotor. I called my doctor today and I have an appointment on Wed. It can be a few months wait for SPECIALISTS, but that again is based on people who are more sick get faster care. If you're not in any serious situation they might set you back 2-3 months, but not 8 months. Isn't it pointless to say Canada's healthcare "Don't compare to most developed nations". Completely untrue and just flat out ridiculous.

blah blah blah . I also live in Canada , and am probably older than you , so i doubt you have more of a clue on the subject than me . You should also develop those reading comprehension skills . Just because you live in an area where you get quick service , doesn't mean the majority do . In fact if you use google you will see many more arguments who put down our health care more than i did .

I live in Toronto . I needed to have athro surgery on both knees . 5 months later i was finally in . If i lived in the u.s. i would of had to pay , but i also bet you anything you own , that i would of had my procedure within a month .

Whatever floats your boat there TO. I'm 35 if that matters to you as some putdown anyway. Great you're older. Good for you.

If you're gonna bust me on "lacking reading comprehnsion skills" about most people don't have easy access to medical, you could in the very least mentioned it in your post I quoted.

So you're whole arguement is you would have rather spent 70k to get a operation in a month instead of getting the operation in 5 months for next to nothing. Obviously you've never been in a position where you slipped on ice and had to pay thousands to fix a broken arm. or 8k to have a baby.

Some people have no idea how good they have it.

Some people have no idea how good they have it.

strayzilla

QFT. Here we are reading about people complaining about the fee for XBL while some poor soul in some 3rd-world country is dying of starvation and never had the chance to experience video gaming.

:P

On a side note, there's never a price too high for someone's life.

This will be my last post because now it really is clear you have no idea what you are talking about .

Let's use Boston Ma as an example since they have the best medical facilities in the world , and a lot of well known doctors . The fees after Both Surgeries in Mass General Hospital would of came out to around $8000 . I have no idea how you even came up with such a ridiculous number as $70000 .

And yes i would of rather paid that and had knees that didn't kill me daily for months , rather than waiting 5 months like i did , and suffering daily .

This will be my last post because now it really is clear you have no idea what you are talking about .

Let's use Boston Ma as an example since they have the best medical facilities in the world , and a lot of well known doctors . The fees after Both Surgeries in Mass General Hospital would of came out to around $8000 . I have no idea how you even came up with such a ridiculous number as $70000 .

And yes i would of rather paid that and had knees that didn't kill me daily for months , rather than waiting 5 months like i did , and suffering daily .

mackreki

Well actually depending on your situation it could cost up to almost $15,000, but yes $70,000 is way off. Also I may point out that if he actually lives in Canada its not that absurd that he doesn't know how much knee surgery costs in another country.