Xbox Live Silver Accounts Now Wait a Week For Demos

1up notes a change in the way that Xbox Live Silver-level (free) memberships work. Now folks that don't pay will have to wait an additional week to get game demos. Microsoft's Xbox representative Major Nelson assures us it's not meant to 'annoy' users of the service, but to provide additional value to Gold subscribers. "When people talk about features they'd like to see added to an Xbox Live Gold subscription, dedicated servers, expanded buddy lists or separate bandwidth pipes for popular downloads are first to mind. Instead of adding features to the Gold experience, however, they're "enhancing" Gold subscriptions by continuing a practice started last summer of stripping Silver members of features and making them Gold-only."

No value was added

[Tridus]

"but to provide additional value to Gold subscribers"

The problem is that no actual value was added. A gold subscripion pre-update is exactly the same as one post-update. No features were added, and nothing was changed. Demos are available at the same time they were before.

Adding value typically requires adding something that wasn't there previously.

(Not that gold actually is a value to begin with. "For only the cost of a game a year, you can actually use the multiplayer part of the games you bought! As opposed to PC and PS3 players, who can use that part without paying anything extra...")

How to add value

[SonicTheDeadFrog]

First off, think practically about this: demos are the video game equivalent of commercials - their sole reason for existence is to entice players to purchase the retail version of a game. This is like telling terrestrial TV viewers that if they want to see commercials then they're going to have to pony up for cable. The practical difference is that most viewers would rather not see commercials, and most players actively seek out demos, but the fact that this limits the scope of advertising remains constant.

M$ is not an organization of geniuses. If they were even reasonably intelligent, they would know that this isn't a viable way to try to scrape some revenue out of the enormous money pit that XBOX Live has become.

I think spending real money for leasing software (which is what anyone who spends any money on Live is doing) is plainly idiotic. It's roughly equivalent of rent-to-own and paycheck advance businesses in terms of ripping off consumers.

But if you are of the mindset that consumers exist to be taken advantage of, it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to see a better way. If you want to add value to entice people to get XBOX Live Gold, start giving them something YOU actually think is worth something, Microsoft, not pointing out that they still have some zero-value feature that you took away from other users.

Give Gold members Microsoft Points free when they get achievements and leave the Silver members with just their Achievement points. Or alternatively allow Gold members to simply accrue points when they renew their subscriptions. The worst possible outcome is that the subscribers take the free stuff and don't buy anything else so you haven't made any money beyond the subscription fee, but by the same token it costs you exactly nothing to give them this stuff for free, so it's a wash. On the other hand, if you get them to open their wallets to "rent" just one arcade title that they couldn't quite afford with the free points then you'll have gained real money for the same nothing, and potentially hooked them on the idea of downloaded content.

You could also invent a new more expensive "Platinum" membership tier that worked like cell phone service where you're allotted a certain number of points every month and have to pay extra for anything above that.

Personally I think software-as-a-service and pay-for-download is the most evil thing any corporation ever thought up. It is a completely one-sided arrangement and all of the advantage goes to the corporation, not the consumer. With physical product there is more cost to the corporation, but the consumer is given with a persistent and non-volatile representation of the software. With digital product, the corporation saves the cost of manufacture - a savings that is rarely apparent in digital download pricing - and the customer is given a volatile representation of the software on a device that the corporation can order to alter, destroy, or disable without the customer's consent. In the event of failure of that device, the customer is completely at the mercy of the corporation to replace the lost software. I would like to see the entire thing go down in flames; so please please please, ignore my advice, Microsoft.