Xbox Live Costs Even More Now

Price change for Xbox LIVE Gold subscription – Xbox Live’s Major Nelson
Yesterday Major Nelson announced price increases for Xbox Live. One month of Gold is increasing from $7.99 to $9.99, and one year subscriptions are going from $49.99 to $59.99. These changes will be in effect starting on November 1, 2010.
Major Nelson said the following about the changes:

Since launching Xbox LIVE in 2002 we have continually added more content and entertainment experiences for our members, while keeping the price the same. We’re confident that when the new pricing takes effect, an Xbox LIVE Gold membership will continue to offer the best value in the industry.

I think Xbox Live user rogXue, despite having a dumb name, said it best in his comment.

Let’s all thank ESPN/Last FM/Twitter/Facebook and every other useless additional service for this. What a world of butthurt…

 
Let’s take a look at the free features of Xbox Live. Demos for every game, achievements, friends list, messaging, voice chat, Xbox Live Arcade, Xbox Live Indie Games, avatars, downloadable content, a well organized market place, and an ugly interface filled with ads. If you pay, you can get party chat, video chat, online gaming, parties, Netflix streaming, Facebook, Twitter, and last.fm.
I’ve been a Gold member previously. The voice chatting is horrible. Why would I want to yell insults at children? That’s all that’s done there. I’ve never wanted to use party chat or video chat at all. In order to use those, I would need to find a large group of people who all want to play console versions of games most likely available on PC. Or maybe Gears of War. I’ve never seen that group. I’ve heard of them, but my friends are computer literate. Facebook, Twitter, and last.fm support is ridiculously stupid. I guess those are the features responsible for the price increase. Why would you ever want those features on a console anyways? I could almost see wanting last.fm until I remember that you can stream media to your consoles anyways (although it’s easier on a PS3).
What’s left? Netflix. Yes, that’s very nice. But I can do it on the other consoles as well. Really they’re asking for us to pay to play Xbox-exclusive titles online (because if they’re not exclusive, we might as well play on a different service) and chat in large groups that don’t exist. It seems like it’d be smarter simply to purchase titles I want to play online for the PS3. Usually the computer is better for playing online, but it’s true that my computer is tied up with WoW almost all the time. But the PS3’s service is free, so it beats the 360. And there are less ads. The online store is more troublesome on the PS3, but I’ll take that for the reduced cost. Thanks Microsoft. Maybe making me shake my arms around to play games will make me happier with you.
Edit: Oh, and I should add that in order to play with my friends online, we all need Xbox Live subscriptions. Great deal. If a few people decide to come over one Friday night, I can just suggest that each of them pay $9.99 to Microsoft.