Xbox360 Microsoft Xbox Live Gold Membership Ripoff Redmond Washington

I have to agree with this one. Especially with the new interface...each of my kids wants to create their own character on the dashboard...

It's insane for Microsoft to think that I am going to buy 5 monthly subscriptions or to even THINK about making someone do so.

But what do I know...I'm waiting for my 4th repair to come back from Microsoft in under 2 months...

Denny you are COMPLETELY wrong. It costs NOTHING for Microsoft to do the so called maintnence on its servers, you know why. Because MOST 360 multi-player games ARE P2P. Meaning NOT dedicated servers, each Xbox 360 is a server and whoever hosts is considered the ACTIVE SERVER. Dont give me the bull about "What about the servers that contain ALL those downloadable content" well get this; you pay for it. Whenever you download an episode of South Park the cost not only entails the licensing BUT also the cost to perform maintnence. $50 a year is not THAT bad; it IS THAT BAD when its for LIVE. Maybe when in the future (still havent heard anything from supervisor yet) we obtain DEDICATED SERVERS then MAYBE its worth the $50 a year. Do you know about 35% of the developers actually run the multiplayer games on THEIR OWN SERVERS. Look at EA, every single EA game is run on an EA SERVER, how do you justify paying $50 to M$ when they are not even offering the service.

i still dont agree with any of you, i keep reading final fantasy, i dont play that game... warcraft i dont play that either, i pretty much play the sports games, battlefield2mc, and a couple racing games, most of which are on PS2, and 100% of them work correctly for me and are also 100% free... so the arguement to this is probably going to be why dont you just play it on there...

well the reason is i just payed 500+ for this xbox and the graphics are alot better.. but thats about it, the online is really nothing different, except i have noticed alot less people on here, this may be due to the fact of the shortages of the systems or people dont want to pay for the internet..

Myself personally I enjoy playing the games online, its more competitive and overall more fun then just wompin on the computer all the time..

the reason i want to use TWO gamertags for example.. burnout, I am decent at the game and gettin better, my girl likes the game online as well... ive gotten as high as 200 world ranking before, i take my a*s to work come home and she got to playing it and im back down to about 3000, does that make any sense to any of you??? I shouldnt have to tell her dont play the game online because your going to mess up my profile, she should have her own to play on..AND no i refuse to pay for it and she does as well...

to apples and oranges, your roomate keeps entering in the 48 hour trial card? so every two days he buys a new game? Most people cant afford that.. I know I can't besides i like keeping my own profile i got friends on here and i dont want to go through the hassle of getting up with all them with a new name.

Now you all can say whatever you want and alot of the things you say are valid.. But in my opinion its still BS... I do have to agree with something one of you said about the 5 kids, they do need to be outside doing something like playing ball or something, but in reality it just doesnt happen like that anymore. anyway i look forward to the response to this.

i would just like to say why dont you use the same acount as ur girlfriend and think how does microsoft make money they spend money to make them sell them then charge u for INTERNET, u have to pay for internet anyways whats wrong with paying for internet on a game system

It really just is internet! use the same profile!
what game r u playing unless u r doing a co op type of thing who cares $49 dollars is A-O-K with me its a amazing system awesome graphics, gameplay, sound! microsoft is NOT ripping u off!

Jsut because its "Free" doesn't mean that you are going to be given the best service either.

BattleNet - Blizzard's "free" online service that connects all their online games (EXCPET World of WarCraft) for free; it's plagued by huge amounts of latency, programs that flood the servers, servers are down most of the time, meaning you have to use European, or Asian servers if you want to play while they work on the server closest to you.

PS2 is free, for how many games? Not many. Final Fantasy XI = requires you to pay for it.

PS3 - is not going to be free entirely. Games that rquire monthly fees, you will be charged that. And how many titles? Not many.

With Xbox 360 you are able to play a multititude of Xbox 1 games that are live capabable, as well as any new titles coming out for Xbox and Xbox 360 that have live capability.

Again, THERE is no ripoff SINCE YOU AGREED TO THE TERMS WHEN YOU SIGNED UP for the service. IF YOu did not like the COST , in the first place, NEXT TIME DO NOT use the service. PLain and simple.

Your example:
"As I said before as an example, what if some parent has 5 kids with different profiles, thats 250 dollars just to let them play online for a year. THATS d**n NEAR THE COST OF THE SYSTEM! "

YES, they would be pyaing that much, but heck, even in our family we ONLY use 2 profiles for 5 people who uses the game. And why do parents must give all their children profiles? Those parents are "dumb" in my opinion. 1 for all five, who should be doing homework, or extra curricular activities isntead of playing video games in the first place.

dont want to pay for it? mcuh of the xbox/360 games come with trial memberships. Just simply cacnel and start a new one. WHOOPEE doo. My roommate hasn't paid for his xbox live membership yet, because he simply doesn't need to "keep" any of the profiles he creates. Just get a new trial card with any new game, and sign up for a new id.

Xbox LIve is a privledge. YOU dont need it in order to play your games. Its a "bonus" feature of games.

PS2 was so not pocketbook friendly. And ps2 has had so many flawed games and service, is laughable. burn out? sorry, that game used to crash when someone would just turn off their ps2 instead of "quitting" through the game itself. They didn't even fix it when the next game came out.

Ignorance is no defense.

Jsut because its "Free" doesn't mean that you are going to be given the best service either.

BattleNet - Blizzard's "free" online service that connects all their online games (EXCPET World of WarCraft) for free; it's plagued by huge amounts of latency, programs that flood the servers, servers are down most of the time, meaning you have to use European, or Asian servers if you want to play while they work on the server closest to you.

PS2 is free, for how many games? Not many. Final Fantasy XI = requires you to pay for it.

PS3 - is not going to be free entirely. Games that rquire monthly fees, you will be charged that. And how many titles? Not many.

With Xbox 360 you are able to play a multititude of Xbox 1 games that are live capabable, as well as any new titles coming out for Xbox and Xbox 360 that have live capability.

Again, THERE is no ripoff SINCE YOU AGREED TO THE TERMS WHEN YOU SIGNED UP for the service. IF YOu did not like the COST , in the first place, NEXT TIME DO NOT use the service. PLain and simple.

Your example:
"As I said before as an example, what if some parent has 5 kids with different profiles, thats 250 dollars just to let them play online for a year. THATS d**n NEAR THE COST OF THE SYSTEM! "

YES, they would be pyaing that much, but heck, even in our family we ONLY use 2 profiles for 5 people who uses the game. And why do parents must give all their children profiles? Those parents are "dumb" in my opinion. 1 for all five, who should be doing homework, or extra curricular activities isntead of playing video games in the first place.

dont want to pay for it? mcuh of the xbox/360 games come with trial memberships. Just simply cacnel and start a new one. WHOOPEE doo. My roommate hasn't paid for his xbox live membership yet, because he simply doesn't need to "keep" any of the profiles he creates. Just get a new trial card with any new game, and sign up for a new id.

Xbox LIve is a privledge. YOU dont need it in order to play your games. Its a "bonus" feature of games.

PS2 was so not pocketbook friendly. And ps2 has had so many flawed games and service, is laughable. burn out? sorry, that game used to crash when someone would just turn off their ps2 instead of "quitting" through the game itself. They didn't even fix it when the next game came out.

Ignorance is no defense.

Jsut because its "Free" doesn't mean that you are going to be given the best service either.

BattleNet - Blizzard's "free" online service that connects all their online games (EXCPET World of WarCraft) for free; it's plagued by huge amounts of latency, programs that flood the servers, servers are down most of the time, meaning you have to use European, or Asian servers if you want to play while they work on the server closest to you.

PS2 is free, for how many games? Not many. Final Fantasy XI = requires you to pay for it.

PS3 - is not going to be free entirely. Games that rquire monthly fees, you will be charged that. And how many titles? Not many.

With Xbox 360 you are able to play a multititude of Xbox 1 games that are live capabable, as well as any new titles coming out for Xbox and Xbox 360 that have live capability.

Again, THERE is no ripoff SINCE YOU AGREED TO THE TERMS WHEN YOU SIGNED UP for the service. IF YOu did not like the COST , in the first place, NEXT TIME DO NOT use the service. PLain and simple.

Your example:
"As I said before as an example, what if some parent has 5 kids with different profiles, thats 250 dollars just to let them play online for a year. THATS d**n NEAR THE COST OF THE SYSTEM! "

YES, they would be pyaing that much, but heck, even in our family we ONLY use 2 profiles for 5 people who uses the game. And why do parents must give all their children profiles? Those parents are "dumb" in my opinion. 1 for all five, who should be doing homework, or extra curricular activities isntead of playing video games in the first place.

dont want to pay for it? mcuh of the xbox/360 games come with trial memberships. Just simply cacnel and start a new one. WHOOPEE doo. My roommate hasn't paid for his xbox live membership yet, because he simply doesn't need to "keep" any of the profiles he creates. Just get a new trial card with any new game, and sign up for a new id.

Xbox LIve is a privledge. YOU dont need it in order to play your games. Its a "bonus" feature of games.

PS2 was so not pocketbook friendly. And ps2 has had so many flawed games and service, is laughable. burn out? sorry, that game used to crash when someone would just turn off their ps2 instead of "quitting" through the game itself. They didn't even fix it when the next game came out.

Ignorance is no defense.

A movie, with popcorn costs how much? For about 2 hours of entertainment.

5 years ago, I paid 156 bucks a year to be able to play one game. And I thought that was good value.
(It works out to pennies an hour, much to my wife's chagrin.)

50 bucks a year is peanuts. Especially when you consider there's more than just online gaming for that 50 bucks.

Yes, it would be more convenient if MS let you have multiple profiles from one system.
But... can you both use the same system at the same time on different profiles, anyway?

The parent with 5 kids that all need their own profile? They would also all need their own XBOXs and at that point the parents are either too rich to be bothered or too dumb to be of any concern.

PS2 online totally free for the games I played
PS3 from E3 was said to be totally free as well
so obviously it doesnt hurt sony in the pocketbook to keep the servers up, and last i heard microsoft has just a little bit more money then Sony.

Now, if Microsoft charged 49 dollars per system, not per profile, it would be more reasonable..

As I said before as an example, what if some parent has 5 kids with different profiles, thats 250 dollars just to let them play online for a year. THATS d**n NEAR THE COST OF THE SYSTEM!

And let me continue onward. If I pay 100 bucks a year for both of the profiles on my system, I expect flawless service. But they have connection issues with games like Burnout and call of duty, and even on the arcade with the uno and spades. I never had a problem with PS2 and connection issues, and I never payed for PS2 online.

I didnt have an original xbox so I wasn't around during the "inception". I guess around that time I had the more consumer friendly and pocketbook friendly, and the better system at the time ps2.

And where have you been for the last 5 years? Its been that way since the first Xbox. That each "gamertag" is considered a seperate entity, and if you wish to continue its use you, pay for it.

$49 is chump change considering if you were to play on say, Sony's Final Fantasy XI online, you pay $13 per month. Each ADDITIONAL character/profile you wish to use, you pay an extra $6 a month.

YOU are getting a deal. AT less than $5 a month for the year, you have access to numerous games that have online capability that are played for that fee.

Get a grip with reality here. IT costs money to maintain those servers you play on. at $50 a year, you are getting the deal of the lifetime.

neXT time, read the policies involved (its listed on their website and in that little card you get with each xbox live compatible game).

Look at the price of other online games, and measure it against what you are paying for your xbox live account:

World of WarCraft - a three-month plan at $13.99 per month, or a six-month plan at $12.99 per month.
Everquest Online - $12.95/mo for the basic connection, and $39.95/mo for the "Legends" level (and they hike prices up)

Xbox live has been the same amount since its inception.