Token Female Gamer

Look what showed up in my email the other day.

Thank you for being a valued member of Xbox LIVE. We want to let you know about an upcoming price increase for Xbox LIVE Gold subscriptions. The new price for Gold membership goes into effect on November 1, 2010. The new prices are as follows:

Old Price / New Price
1-Month Gold Subscription $7.99 / $9.99
3-Month Gold Subscription $19.99 / $24.99
12-Month Gold Subscription $49.99 / $59.99

With an Xbox LIVE Gold membership, you can play blockbuster games such as Halo: Reach with your friends online, you can also stream movies from Netflix* and music from Last.fm right to your TV. You can even connect with friends near and far on Facebook® and Twitter™. Gold members also enjoy exclusive discounts and early access to game demos. And, this holiday, Xbox LIVE is adding new Gold features, including ESPN and Video Kinect, with Hulu Plus coming on Xbox Live in 2011.

I should start his rant off by saying that I am not an Xbox LIVE Gold member and dont plan on ever being one. So while I appreciate them letting me know that their rates will go up, that is (shockingly) not going to convince me to pay Microsoft any more money.

In fact I’m constantly shocked that anyone would pay for this service, that anyone even signed up for it in the first place. You know, back in the day when the fail rate on the Xbox was around 50%.

The whole idea that I am paying yet more money to play online makes me slightly ill. That’s pretty much what you get, online playing, oh and voice chat (which I’m never going to use ever, thank you dicks of the online Xbox world).

Steam is free. Why not Xbox gold service?

Frankly, Steam is the better service and I don’t have to pay for it. Then again I’m sure Valve would charge for Steam service if they could somehow make it impossible for people to play online unless they used the dedicated Steam network. Sound familiar? Gold service is a dicking because they bundled in multiplayer capabilities. Huge scam. (Hmmm, I wonder how quickly the Gold Membership would become free if people stopped paying for it.)

Ultimately I hope that people get their moneys worth, it just makes me sooooo mad that they got away with charging for a service that is free on so many other platforms. I dont really have time or inclination to play Xbox games online much, but I probably would have if I had the option. No way am I paying a fee just to dabble online every now and then. And thats exactly what it would be, a mere dabbling on my part.

Guess I will just stick with my online WoW addiction. I already spend plenty of money on that.

Side note: the guys at Penny Arcade discussed this increase in a comic recently. Their concerns (though hilarious) are a bit different then mine, yet the dicking that is involved is made quite apparent. =)

Tags: comics, industry, online, rants, steam, world of warcraft, xbox360

This entry was posted on Friday, September 3rd, 2010 at 10:11 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.