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Microsoft: no plans to drop Xbox Live Gold fees

Posted Aug 1, 2008 at 12:38AM EST by Karl B.

Listed in: Xbox 360 Tags: Dashboard, MCV, Microsoft, UK, xbox 360 titles, XNA

Microsoft may be scrapping charges for Games for Windows Live, but the company will not be making its Xbox Live Gold services free.

This was confirmed to MCV UK by a Microsoft spokesperson. An Xbox Live Gold membership currently cost GBP 39.99 (around US$ 80) a year in the UK. The twelve-month Premium Gold Pack in the U.S. goes for around US$ 60.

Microsoft announced at XNA Gamefest 08 last week that it will be scrapping the charges for Games for Windows Live in order to "improve Windows gaming". The announcement fueled some speculation that the same thing will happen to its Xbox Live counterpart.

The same spokesperson stressed that Microsoft plans to "give even more reasons why Xbox Live Gold is the best bargain in the industry" starting with the upcoming Xbox Live Experience dashboard update.

Via MCVUK

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Who is going to kill their very own cash cow? Live has minimal overhead. The major cost was the implementation of the system 7 years ago. Since then, its merely been a matter of upholding a set of standards and minimal staffing for weekly updates. If people are willing to pay for that, Microsoft would be insane to not charge for it. Its free money.

# ... — chessboxer 2008-08-01 03:16

M$ would be stupid to end charges for Xbox Live. They make a mint off of 360 owners. As of May 2008 there were 12 million Gold & Silver subscribers. M$ haven't stated how many Gold subscribers they have but I guess it will be well over 50% which is a nice wod of cash.

PC gaming should remain free, shame on M$ for charging.

# Minimum Maintenance fee... — Xastabus 2008-08-01 03:28

Honestly, the fee charged by Microsoft isn't bad compared to other online offerings.

~$60 USD per year for online access to all online multiplayer games (except the MMOs), messaging, voice mail, video chat, unified system wide friends lists.

Compare it to PC games, no friends lists across games, messaging and voice chat typically aren't supported in-game so you have to use a third party software that not all players may use. A lot of games don't even have centralized servers, instead they rely on players to host games, which can result in vastly differing experiences and levels of fairness.

Compare it to MMOs, last time I checked it was at least $120/per year on most pay-to-play games and that only allows you to play ONE game. You'd have to pay even more for multiple games even if they're hosted by the same company.

Compare it to Nintendo's WiFi service... yeah, that one isn't even worth playing for free.

I don't have a PS3 so I really can't speak about their offering.

Sure Microsoft is making money on it, but they're also continuing to improve the service which takes money.

# One possibility... — phiyuku 2008-08-01 06:44

If PSN gets to be as great as Richard Lemarchand says, M$ might just drop its live price so it can compete with sony. If both companies have a great online service and one is free and one you would have to pay, most likely everyone will go for the free one.

# true — Deviant721 2008-08-01 07:28

i totally agree with you......and besides it must not be that expensive if many people are paying for it

# about a dollar a week — rollypoly 2008-08-01 08:28

PCs don't follow a razor/blade business model. every copy of windows sells for a profit, the xbox does not.

i consider about a dollar a week a steal, i lose more change than that in a week.

i tried PSN for the weekend i owned a ps3, and it should be free... who paid the guy that thought a website like layout would be good for a console marketplace... oh yeah, no one.

# Good Point — Binary 2008-08-01 09:00

Free Multiplayer services does not do to well and every mod or admin had spend their whole time Kicking and hammering users and they don't have chance to play to enjoy the game.

With Xbox Live, Its nice to have a clean community and its ability to keep in touch with friends and ability to store your hard work achievements.

50 bucks a year? If you cant afford that then you can't afford a 1 $60 dollar video game. Also all your money is going to the hard working team that's making the new experience.

# Stupid stupid stupid — cmonkey99 2008-08-01 09:33

This is why people are moving towards sony

By the time you buy all the accesories like hardrives and wireless internet and then buy the online gaming its more expensive than a 40gb PS3

Not to mention they can't even pump out true 1080p on a 360!

The PS3's time is now

The 360's was when halo 3 came out

# you are mistaken — rollypoly 2008-08-01 11:24

the 360 can do 1080p just fine...

did that ps3 come with an HD cable? didn't think so...

# 1 problem — GW2 2008-08-01 13:37

most live games dont have there own severs and do use hosting systems, halo 3, gears of war and almost every other 360 game.

# @ rollypoly — chessboxer 2008-08-01 16:35

cmonkey99 might be referring to games which have a native resolution of 1080p. The 360, despite being out 15 months before the PS3 only has 3 or 4 games which are native at 1080p.

In comparison, the much younger PS3 has around 30.

Just having 1080p on the back of the box doesn't make a game native 1080p. An example of this is GTA4 which we all know is 720p/630p, but it can be upscaled to 1080p.

Obviously don't just take my word for it, do a Google search.

# ok — Ace&Jocelyn 2008-08-02 07:35

Yeah, because all the 360 owners who don't have a PS3 will go out and buy one because its online service is free.

# competition — phiyuku 2008-08-02 17:43

what ur not seeing is competition if xbox live is beaten by the Playstation Network then xbox will drop its price since where is that superiority and microsoft will try to do better then sony and the cycle repeats and what might end up happening is free great online play.

# @Chessboxer what? — Kingofdaberbz 2008-08-02 18:04

rollypolly was replying to the man who said the 360 CAN'T DO 1080P native when it can. The number of games are irrelevant. Anyway with all the ps3 game installs most people can't even put videos on there ps3 it's just awful. People have to run out and keep buying(hdds) and installing games to play them.

# . — DontCryIfYouDie 2008-08-03 01:16

well for half the price of a ps3 compatible hardrive, i can get double the amount of memory than the xbox 360s 120gb HDD. i do agree that the amount of games that now require installs is ridiculous for the ps3.

But what happens when people have/want to install games on the 360 to reduce the noise/heat of there disk drive and with the new dashboard update coming where it allows you to install the entire game to my hardrive i might be forced to upgrade my 20gb hardrive to the 120gb for a stupid amount of money.

# Servers... — Xastabus 2008-08-04 03:07

I'll grant you that, but at the same time ISPs are continuing to deliver faster speeds so it sort of balances out. The big advantages of a unified login system is the Friends list and the ability to know what games your friends are playing without using an external method of communication.

We're probably not going to see anything but MMOs and similar large scale multiplayer games have centralized servers simply due to the computational and bandwidth constraints. It's simply more efficient to have the players host the smaller games. That unfortunately opens games up to cheaters who will abuse server glitches.

I prefer the Halo 3 server model where the server is randomly selected and the players don't know who the server is.

# You get what you pay for — Viphid 2008-08-05 04:38

and I recieve a great online gaming experience for $50 a year. This is another reason why I wont get a PS3. You must be the kind that likes Regular A** TV as opposed to Cable. Well your rabbit ears wont work for long bud so get to it. -V

# Their not. — Viphid 2008-08-05 04:40

Windows Live Gold will be free for PC gamers starting this fall. I'll still gladly pay for my Gold Live. Easily. -V

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