It would be an irresponsible understatement to say that there was a great deal of mixed opinions spreading across the internet yesterday on the announcement that Microsoft would be bumping up the price of the Xbox Live Gold come November 1st by a scant $10. Despite those who have still not gotten over the immediate outrage and will continue screaming foul long after anyone has stopped caring, there's admittedly a fair amount of validity to their arguments. Given that it is a recession, it would be understandable that the primary user base of the console and the Xbox Live service would exercise a demonstrable outrage at a price increase for a yearly subscription. On the other hand, it seems almost asinine that an additional $10 bucks would deter people from still buying into 365 days of Live. While it's difficult to discern a middle ground, this is definitely not the worst thing Microsoft could have done and warrants a fair amount of examination. So, let's get to it. Being the first to admit that the functionality offered by Twitter and Facebook couldn't have proven to be more than useless since it's rollout last year with NXE. It isn't necessarily a flaw on the part of the interface or overall accessibility, but a matter of functionality. The average Xbox Live user isn't out to post on Facebook or Twitter in-between or during matches of Halo, Gears of War or Call of Duty about pawning newbs. Likewise, people are not going to leave their consoles on for the sole purpose of posting to either of the sites – that's a role that is still well entrenched on either a PC or Smartphone because people crave the mobile convenience that these devices offer.
On top of that, trying to type anything longer than 'Hi' without the aid of a messenger pad is a ridiculous exercise in futility that will only leave people feeling frustrated before angrily rejoining a game of CTF. For a service that offers such brilliantly stellar communication via voice and video, it makes text a clunky, anachronistic dinosaur – and not a cool velociraptor dinosaur. Certainly, the problem is not the use of a text-based interface, but a superfluous proffer of programs that don't need it. It would be like tossing me a donut-shaped life preserver while I'm sitting in a hot tub, it does nothing but cramp my style and make me look like one of the 'special' children. The same thing couldn't be truer for Facebook and Twitter on the dashboard. Speaking of the dashboard, that thing is a pretty huge f-cking mess if you ask me and by reading this, you surely are. Remember when we were promised a fluid, succinct visual experience that the old dashboard blades couldn't possible hold up to according to Microsoft? Want to take a wild guess how I know that Microsoft is a software engineering business to the core? Because they tried to fix something that wasn't broken. The blades were a mess, but they were a mess where gamers had a general idea of where things could be found – Navigating NXE went from being somewhat cool to suicide inducing in less than a few months. But Microsoft had to implement it for the sake of making our lives easier, right?
No. It was implemented so Microsoft had the ability to advertise to Xbox Live Silver and Gold members in a way that was previously unprecedented. Turn on your Xbox; be greeted by a goddamn advert. It wasn't bad enough that games have begun slipping ads into the games we play already; they now charge us for the privilege to gaze upon them while we take cover from incoming gunfire courtesy of terrorists and aliens alike. Understandably, I would be a bit more flexible if the $50 that was already being paid went somewhere each month, but the fact of the matter is that it only nets users a modicum of additional features on top of multiplayer – most of which must be paid for independently. Netflix is a pretty cool offering in addition to Hulu Plus, which combined could very well cement the Xbox 360's place next to my television better than any cable or satellite dish programming boxes ever could. The sheer amount of content in these cases moderately outweighs the cost – but just barely. I'm still paying that $50 on top of the roughly $20 for Netflix and $10 for Hulu Plus – at least as far as the beta is concerned for that, which should be rolled out to the console “sometime”. And while I do easily prefer the path of digital distribution in the case of film and TV as opposed to physical media for my games, that still is a stretch to justify the $60 price tag for a year. However, if you spread the cost of $60 over a year, is that still really too much to be paying for access to both a cohesive multiplayer platform complete with early demos and now ESPN functionality? Let's break this down by using WoW as an alternate example. Despite being a PC game, it is still a social gaming experience, arguably similar to many of the multiplayer offerings on Xbox Live.
This feature editorial continues on the next page, please click below to see our final conclusion on the pros and cons of the Xbox LIVE price increase.
