Xbox Live Pricing To Go Up To $60 Per Year

donniebaseball23 writes "Microsoft has raised the annual price of Xbox Live Gold to $60, which is a price hike of $10. The new price goes into effect on November 1, but gamers can lock in the current Xbox Live price by renewing now. EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich is not surprised by the move, nor does he think it will really have much impact on the Xbox momentum."

price drop

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened to the rumor a few months ago that XBOX live pricing was dropping? I remember when amazon had the 12+1 month cards for $30 and everyone was saying it's because they're going to drop the price anyway.

They can get away with it by pointing to Sony...

[Dusty101]

Perhaps the timing of this isn't a coincidence, given that Sony recently just launched their own pay-to-play subscription service, PSN Plus? They can claim that this is just the going rate, nowadays...

Greedy

[Necreia]

Live is a portal that provides the following:
- Targeted Advertising, which makes Microsoft money
- Media purchasing avenue (Games, Videos, Add-ons, etc), which makes Microsoft money
- Multiplayer functionality around games which make Microsoft Money
- Subscription Fee, which makes Microsoft money

Only cost that has no/little return is from people who play multilayer constantly and somehow avoids seeing any of the advertisements.

This is really just a profit grab. I can't really blame them since they don't have to compete with anyone for their existing install base, but it does irk me.

Cost vs Service

[Darkness404]

Why is Microsoft increasing the price when service is going downhill? Is Xbox live -really- that enjoyable for anyone? In my experience its filled with 12 year old kids who just call you gay the entire match, team-killing assholes, most games have a pretty crappy skill matching system meaning the learning curve is high and older players get frustrated, etc.

I'm not seeing why Xbox live costs as much as it does now, let alone why there would be a price increase.

And really, MS shouldn't give Sony a foothold in this area because the PS3 can keep on kicking long after the 360 has been "maxed out"

Re:Greedy

[Chewbacon]

Don't forget they phased out Xbox originals support on XBL. So they slashed features and now they're charging more? PSN is looking more appetizing to me now.

One of the reasons I bought a PS3

[dave562]

The final decision that tipped me toward the PS3 and away from the Xbox360 was the fact that playing online games on the PS3 is free. I hadn't even considered the fact that Microsoft would eventually increase the fee for their service.

Re:Lock in at $40

[Digicrat]

Still a good deal though (thxs), even if it's just for a year. Personally, I'm on the fence about renewing now ... for $40 I'll probably renew it, but at $60 it's probable I won't next year.

Lately, all I've used my M$ Xbox Live for is Netflix and very rarely for games. The Xbox is the fastest/most convenient way of watching Netflix ... but if the price goes up and I don't find myself playing Live games any more over the next few months, it'll be time to drop it in favor of just watching it through the PC.

Of course, then I'll need to buy myself that silly DisplayPort adapter so I can output to the TV and both monitors at the same time from the PC instead of having to choose 2 of 3 screens already connected via the other ports, but that's another story/rant...

Re:Greedy

[Monkeedude1212]

Let's get one thing Straight: Xbox Live Silver is free. 1 lifetime Silver account comes with your XBox. With that, you get

- Media purchasing avenue (Games, Videos, Music, Add-ons, Themes, etc)
- Chat with friends online and a way to compare achievements easily
- Some Basic Features, such as free demos, Xbox News updates, Facebook, etc

With A Gold Membership, the only thing you really pay for is the Multiplayer Functionality. At 60 dollars for 12 months, that's 5 bucks a month. In comparison, lets say going to the movies costs you 10 dollars and lasts 2 hours. In order to be more ripped off by X-Box Live than you do going to the movie theatre once a month, you have to use live for 1 hour or less every 2 months.

Re:They can get away with it by pointing to Sony..

[sixfootfive]

It was free for a bit, I had let my Gold membership expire, which gave me a Silver, and Netflix worked for about 2 weeks before they required the Gold memberships. I think this is in poor taste. If I bought the console, pay for a Netflix subscription, and pay to have Internet, why does Microsoft need money for this transaction as well?

No one saw this coming

[Anonymous Coward]

I am re-posting these comments since they seem to have disappeared from Google. They were posted on Slashdot in the early years of the first Xbox.

If you think X-Box is about game consoles, you miss the whole point. X-Box is about learning how to control the hardware design as well as the software. Today you can buy Lotus Notes for Windows and Microsoft doesn't make a penny. Worse, you can get Perl or GCC for Windows and write your own code without paying M$ one penny. Not only that, they have to support all that legacy hardware in each Windows release, not to mention that pesky trial over the OS itself. Once Windows is the embedded OS in a Microsoft-controlled hardware product, many good things (for Microsoft) happen:

• There is no threat from any other OS.
• There is no cry of "Unfair middleware bundling!"
• There is no issue of different licenses for different hardware makers, or of rogue hardware makers loading a non-M$ approved desktop.
• Everyone who writes software for the box has to pay Microsoft a royalty -- guess what this does to the Free Software folks?
• Microsoft can provide ever-greater improvements just by re-flashing the ROM via your (required) Internet connection (don't have one? sign here for MSN for just $5/month more than you're paying now).
• Oh, did I mention manditory software subscriptions?
• Want more storage space? We'll rent you more for a slightly higher subscription (no hardware upgrade needed)

This this is all a pipe dream? Think nobody will buy this?

First of all, the article states that MS only makes $5-$10 off each title sold. I'm sure that for MS's own titles, the profit margin is far higher. So perhaps they only need to sell maybe 10 titles per box to break even.

But of course, they're losing money. They've publicly stated that they plan to lose upwards of $2,000,000,000 before they start making a profit. So how do they plan to do this?

As the parent mentioned, XBox 2. The goal is to get people comfortable with having a MS product as part of their "entertainment system". Once people are comfortable with that, MS can sell you a $1,000 .Net "Entertainment Server Appliance" or whatever they want to call it, and then you're locked into MS compatibility for not only your computing, but for all your entertainment purchases (which is of course a much bigger market.)

XBox.Net (online gaming subscriptions.) In this case, the goal is to get people comfortable with sending $10 or $20 a month to Microsoft, more or less automatically without thinking. Then Office subscriptions will eventually seem a lot more palatable.

So why is Microsoft doing this? Because they can, now that people have let them get a foot in the door.

Re:If not 360 or Windows, then what?

[tepples]

PLAYSTATION 3 and Wii are good if you only care about major-label games. Most of the indie games that aren't on Apple or HTC handhelds are on Microsoft platforms: the Windows PC and to a lesser extent the Xbox 360. One thing Windows and Xbox 360 have going for them is the diversity that only comes from open development, in the same way that iPhone beat out BREW phones.