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Xbox Live Pricing To Go Up To $60 Per Year

Posted by Soulskill on from the nickles-and-dimes dept.

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."

13 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Makes Sense by chazchaz101 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, with the price of gold these days...

  2. Lock in at $40 by tzenes · · Score: 5, Informative

    For those of you interested you can lock in your yearly rate at $40 a year (a $10 discount on the current price and $20 on the increased price) by going to this link:

    http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/pricelock/default.htm

    1. Re:Lock in at $40 by Digicrat · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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...

  3. Re:They can get away with it by pointing to Sony.. by crabbz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sony does not charge to play on PSN. PSN+ gives you access to content, everyone can play.

  4. Greedy by Necreia · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Greedy by j0nb0y · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, seriously. You forgot things like Netflix, which requires a live subscription AND a Netflix subscription.

      At least when they had 1v100 I felt like I was getting a little value add, but now it just seems like a ripoff. I wonder how many people will actually pay $60 though. When the price was $50, the subscription cards periodically went on sale for $35 - $40. I wonder if the sale price will go up too. I think I'm good until around March, which means I'll have to renew to play Gears 3, *groan*

      When live first came out it was a great thing. No one else had that level of seemless match making, game joining, friends list, etc. But now the PC has things like Steam and XFire *for free* so Live just seems like a rip off.

      --
      If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
  5. Perhaps you've never heard of saturation by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are only so many people that want game consoles. The idea that their sales will go up and up forever is silly. Never happened in the past. They sell a lot when they come out, maybe even at an increasing rate as they drop in price and become popular, however they then decline as they age and most people who want one own one.

    Also the real money in consoles is not made on the hardware, it is on the software. The hardware is sold for a fairly minimal profit at best, and sometimes sold for a loss (the 360 was sold at a loss when it launched). The money is made in the games and services. You have to pay a per copy sold licensing fee to release a game on a console. So you make real money in selling lots of games people want, and on having services (like Xbox live) they pay for.

    Of course you do need console owners for that, so console sales aren't irrelevant, but if you sell tens of millions of consoles and your sales ramp off, that's fine, so long as people buy stuff for them.

    1. Re:Perhaps you've never heard of saturation by stagg · · Score: 5, Funny

      There are only so many people that want game consoles. The idea that their sales will go up and up forever is silly.

      Although they did try to address this with a 50%+ failure rate in the first year...

  6. Re:They can get away with it by pointing to Sony.. by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sony's not putting Netflix behind some bizarre paywall either.

    --
    Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
  7. One of the reasons I bought a PS3 by dave562 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  8. Re:They can get away with it by pointing to Sony.. by cdrudge · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ask Microsoft how they can do it. That's exactly what they do. You have to be a gold subscriber in order to use the Netflix app/dashboard/whatever you call it on 360.

  9. Re:$5 a month by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Turns out that when people wanted Consoles to be a "more equal" platform for online gaming, that meant routing all traffic through proprietary servers.

    That's right, even though Halo 3 was designed with P2P hosting/clients in mind, it still has to run through Microsoft Servers in order to weed out hacking and other malicious activities that people try to pull off with an XBox. What you pay for with that 60/year is that service, the matchmaking, the tracking, the moderators who have to ban people, etc.

    That kind of environment doesn't pay for itself. If you don't like it, the PC market is still alive.

  10. Check the 8-year inflation rate by cbhacking · · Score: 5, Informative

    "20% inflation" implies that they raise the cost like this every year. They don't. They raised the price from its 2002 point.

    Inflation figures according to http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
    $50 in 2002 = $60.59 in 2010.

    Also, economies of scale don't necessarily apply. For example, moderation of the player base requires a number if people in direct proportion to the player base, and maybe even a little worse - the more players are, not only the more problem people you have but the more people each of them can piss off. That means a geometrically increasing number of complaints as the player base increases.

    Not that I'm not in support of this change; I have a Silver subscription on an Xbox 360 that I got for free, and no intention of purchasing Gold any time soon, so it doesn't really affect me either way. Your post is at best misleading, however.

    --
    There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...