Paying for Xbox Live doesn't make sense.

And while we're at it, paying for games doesn't make sense, paying for extra controllers doesn't make sense, paying for TVs to view the game on doesn't make sense, paying ISPs for an internet connection doesn't make sense. TC, you're right, we should all rise up against the industry and demand that EVERYTHING be free!

This

IS

SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

ok ok, that last part was thrown in for comedic melodrama... couldn't help myself :oops: 

I'm not basking XBL, just taking a look at things (although i'd like some sort of pricedrop).6 million XBL accounts x$50 a year. lets take a ballpark guess here & say a third of those are gold paying members. thats 2million people x 50 dollars a year. basic math = 100,000,000. a hundred million a year is not the cost of server upkeep yearly. it shouldn't even break 1 mil. MS could drop the price easily if they wanted to but they're making too much damn money atm. plus all the micro transactions, a buck or two for a couple picture packs or themes that a guy could make in photoshop in 5 minutes for free.

edit: oh & if you change the amount to 6mil gold members (since MS said they have 6 million accounts on XBL), MS would be making closer to 300 million.

I think it's time for Microsoft to change their online paradigm.

Xbox Live is a great service, but I don't believe that XBox Live users should have to pay to play their games with other people. Xbox Live is simply a matchmaking service - the multiplayer games don't run on dedicated Microsoft servers.

Personally, I would rather not have to pay. It's not a big deal for me though. But I think that online gaming, like rumble, should now be considered a "standard" feature of a video game console, not an optional one that you have to pay extra for.