Xbox Live Gold Price Increase 11/1 - Subscription Deals Inside

[quote name='mitch079']$.83 cents a month/increase isn't that much. They've added a bunch of features over the years and never raised the price before - Netflix, Last.fm, Twitter, Facebook, Zune[/QUOTE]

Not sure about others, but I've never used any of those features except just to test them... and Zune isn't really a new feature, it just replaced their Video Marketplace which already functioned just fine.

At some point it'd probably make sense for them to start breaking out some of these features... online play being the most important, so that people can choose what they want to pay for.. Want everything? $60. Just online play? $30... Or something like that.

On the other hand, online play is pretty much the only reason people keep paying for this, and that started at $50 to begin with... People grudgingly paid it because they had no choice really, and keep doing so for the same reason. If more games start using their own subscriptions there's going to be a bigger backlash for this.
 
This is bullshit especially since no features have been added. Hell when your competition has the same features for free you would figure they would lower the price. This has to be because of ESPN. The main reason why cablevision and other companies haven't signed up for ESPN 3 is because Disney wants to be paid for their service.
I might just move over to the PC for all of my online games from now on...
 
[quote name='KaneRobot']MS drops 1 vs 100, and it costs us all 10 dollars.

Quoth Ice Cube: fuck all y'all.[/QUOTE]

Dont forget they had to drop the original Xbox Live games so they could....charge more money. YAY!
 
Kind of ridiculous when the dashboard has more ads than ever. Up yours MS.


EDIT: Also, if this is related to ESPN then it really sucks because I have Time Warner and won't even be able to use it.
 
My live dies in Oct. I wasn't going to renew it until April 2011. So this kind of blows. I hope I can get a decent deal at that time. I'm not paying 60 bucks for a year to play one game online.
 
[quote name='Don illmatix']there are always deals for Xbox live subs so this doesnt bother me one bit[/QUOTE]

Except for the fact that these deals will now cost about $10 more than you're use to paying.
 
So...we lose features...and now get charged more? Awesome. Well, at least MS doesn't sell massively overpriced, proprietary accessori...oh wait...they do...
 
What I don't understand is why Major Nelson releases this information on his dumb "blog". Why wouldn't be link to something on xbox.com? It drives me crazy that Tool has somehow built a brand out of himself. It makes no sense, the guy has guaranteed himself a job with Xbox forever with a horrible podcast and posting new DLC every couple days.
 
[quote name='bigdaddybruce44']So...we lose features...and now get charged more? Awesome. Well, at least MS doesn't sell massively overpriced, proprietary accessori...oh wait...they do...[/QUOTE]


lol, thanks for the laugh :lol:
 
I went ahead and ordered a card on Amazon for $39.xx and free shipping. My sub ends February 2011 so I wanted to get another year for cheap.

This is also why I hate MS by the way. Lose features and jack up the price. Bravo. What could possibly be next?
 
Is any one on this forum even paying full price for XBL now? If you are finding deals on cards now you'll be able to find them a year from now.
 
[quote name='hufferstl']What I don't understand is why Major Nelson releases this information on his dumb "blog". Why wouldn't be link to something on xbox.com? It drives me crazy that Tool has somehow built a brand out of himself. It makes no sense, the guy has guaranteed himself a job with Xbox forever with a horrible podcast and posting new DLC every couple days.[/QUOTE]

He's Microsoft's PR person for Xbox Live. What else would you expect? He's on their payroll. They pay him to push the live service and to post the new DLC every couple of days...
 
[quote name='Scorch']every single one of you will still buy the year subscription to xbox live.[/QUOTE]

I won't unless I can get it for around 40 April 2011. ;)
 
I'll just copy/paste what I posted on VGChartz.


Nothing really to defend but the two excuses I can see are inflation and ESPN. The price hasn't changed in seven years so it was either gonna go up or down sooner or later (obviously up now) and inflation has increased a bit since then. Do grocery prices ever stay the same? When they go up do you get more content? Not normally.

This will also help if Kinect bombs and/or they are losing money on Kinect they can use their subscribers to subsidize the cost (along with all the stuff they download, MS gets 30% cut on everything right?)

Lastly anyone who visits cheapassgamer or any deal website knows they could of had XBL year cards for $30 or less. I've never *Chris Jericho impression* EVVVVVVVVVERRRRRR paid more then $30 a year for Live.

Unless your a teen who depends on your parents to buy you Live, chances are you have a credit card and a brain to find deals out there. Playstation users will continue to laugh at this of course considering they are getting decent features for free, and when they pay they actually get free games out of it.
 
[quote name='spid']Is any one on this forum even paying full price for XBL now? If you are finding deals on cards now you'll be able to find them a year from now.[/QUOTE]
Except those deals will now be most likely cost $10 more than before...
 
[quote name='jman619']I won't unless I can get it for around 40 April 2011. ;)[/QUOTE]

Yeah, 40 is the most I'd pay, and that's pushing it. Mine runs out in January 2011, so hoping to find another $30 deal before the price increase in Nov. to put it up to 2012.

Then I can put off the decision to keep it or not for a year+.
 
Wow, I really though Microsoft would start moving toward a free service, not upping the subscription rates. The real long term money here is in real content (downloadable games and dlc), not walling off a community and charging a fee. I still don't understand what Microsoft is providing as a monthly service, to warrant a monthly fee. If they were providing dedicated servers for multiplayer, making sure that games stayed alive even when the original developer was going to discontinue them (Chromehounds), etc. maybe I could understand the cost. But what "service" are we paying for?

[quote name='leshrac55'] Not sure about others, but I've never used any of those features except just to test them... and Zune isn't really a new feature, it just replaced their Video Marketplace which already functioned just fine.

At some point it'd probably make sense for them to start breaking out some of these features... online play being the most important, so that people can choose what they want to pay for.. Want everything? $60. Just online play? $30... Or something like that.[/QUOTE]

They really shouldn't be charging monthly for these "features" (Netflix, Live.FM, Twitter, Facebook, etc). On a phone these would be considered app's and you would either pay a small one time fee, or get it free because Facebook/Live.FM/Twitter/Facebook want you subscribing and accessing their content in any way possible. I would be comfortable paying a small app fee to access these services, but in no way is their a continuing service from Microsoft that warrants a monthly fee to access these features, especially when Microsoft essentially has a captive audience that they show ads to through xbox live. Really these features should be free though, any decent web browser can handle these features built-in, the PS3 and the Wii can already do most of these for free.

[quote name='leshrac55'] On the other hand, online play is pretty much the only reason people keep paying for this, and that started at $50 to begin with... People grudgingly paid it because they had no choice really, and keep doing so for the same reason. If more games start using their own subscriptions there's going to be a bigger backlash for this. [/QUOTE]

I think that there is a bigger reason for people to continue paying for live, that everyone justifying the price with feature x or y has neglected to mention. And IMO it's a perfectly reasonable justification. If you've chosen the 360 as your main or only online platform (or even one of many), and all your friends are on xbox live, then it would probably be a bigger investment than $60 a year to switch to another online service or console. Not only would you need to rebuy the games you like (monetary cost), but you would be leaving the community of friends you've built (non-monetary cost). That's why everything on xbox live is so community focused. You might not be loyal to the Live platform, but you'll likely remain loyal to your individual community. And since they were so far in front of the other consoles in the online space, the other consoles still have a huge perception issue to overcome for many gamers.
 
[quote name='Monsta Mack']I'll just copy/paste what I posted on VGChartz.


Nothing really to defend but the two excuses I can see are inflation and ESPN. The price hasn't changed in seven years so it was either gonna go up or down sooner or later (obviously up now) and inflation has increased a bit since then. Do grocery prices ever stay the same? When they go up do you get more content? Not normally.

[/QUOTE]

They put in more ads than before which is more than enough to set off any increase cost. Plus they even have ads with sound.
 
if they jack the price up i really wish live would work like any arcade game. they should enable live on a console and gamertag. not just the gamertag. it really pisses me off that MS wants me to pay additional cash to enable people in my household to play on live using their tag.
 
I dont no the rate but what is that in GBP?

I got told that if somink cost 11 Dollars it would cost me 8 GBP?

Is That Right?
 
^^^^
10USD=6.46920GBP

Its like I'm already paying for shit in a paper bag, but now I am paying more but I don't even get more shit in the bag.

$10/year isn't going to kill me, but jesus, all I use Live for is P2P gaming (which should be free), and voice chat (which should be free).
 
In one way or another it will go to activision.

Black Ops Map Pack Xbox exclusive for 3 Months!!

Money has to come from somewhere, its the players
 
This is complete bullshit. I don't see a single improvement to the XBL service that warrants a 20% cost increase. I've always been against charging for online gaming (MMOs are my only exception) but this just solidifies my position.

Greed is killing the game industry and my interest in it...
 
Gonna have to keep an eye out for XBL subscription card deals. My sub lasts until March but if I can get another year at a cheaper price now...

The cynic in me also thinks that some of this price increase is due to ESPN- a feature that I don't see myself taking advantage of.

Is the XBL points to dollars ratio going to change as well? What if that changes in the future too?
 
Wow this is utter BS. I'm stunned - I was actually expecting a small price reduction due to the lack of features you get with Gold and the non existent "deals/free stuff". This is not even a +$5 increase it is 10 fricken bucks.

Well I'm glad they messed up with Netflix and gave me 3 years or I'd be done.
 
Have to agree this is BS; I really thought MS would move towards the Playstation model just to take that point away from Sony, but they've apparently decided to screw over the consumer. Like many of you, the only thing I'd use Gold for is online gaming, I don't care about Facebook/Twitter/Last.FM on a console, ESPN is pointless to me, etc.

They really should have tiers. If you JUST want online gaming, you'd pay $30/year. Want Facebook/Twitter/maybe some occasional freebies, pay $40. Want everything? Pay $50.

Oh, wait, they won't do that since about 95% of subs would just go cheaper. :p
 
Well, they do need to redesign the Xbox Live month cards so they fit their new logos and designs. So I guess the new card design is worth the extra $10. You don't want to look like old news with outdated card designs... do you?
 
[quote name='Monsta Mack']I'll just copy/paste what I posted on VGChartz.


Nothing really to defend but the two excuses I can see are inflation and ESPN. The price hasn't changed in seven years so it was either gonna go up or down sooner or later (obviously up now) and inflation has increased a bit since then. Do grocery prices ever stay the same? When they go up do you get more content? Not normally.

[/QUOTE]

MS isn't growing anything, then paying someone to pick it and then trucking somewhere and paying someone to put it on shelf. If anything, their overall cost structure has dropped significantly over time....eight years ago I was paying $25 for 128k internet access, now I pay the same $25 for something 100 times faster...Nor have server costs climbed over time...if anything, those costs have dropped along the lines of my internet costs. Live is effectively a virtual product, with very few incremental per user costs and a fair number of fixed costs. Once those fixed costs are covered, every new user paying money is insanely profitable.

Have they added new content, last.fm, facebook, ect....Did that new content really cost actual money, not so much outside of a little server load and some bandwidth...You can bet that MS wrote those agreements in such a way that MS is not paying much, if anything, for access to them. Although I have little doubt that they are forking over cash for ESPN that I have ZERO interest in.

This is just a money grab....I'm sure that MS saw how much activision made with their map packs on MW2 and someone suggested that clearly they were underpricing their product....The thing of it is, a 20% price increase is likely to drive off a fair number of extremely lucrative light/casual users that don't cost hardly anything to service, while the hardcorz heavy users that are more costly to service will pay it. So your costs stay the roughly same while total revenue stays the same or drops....and the network effect also works in reverse....If I drop Xbox live gold, the odds are my brother will too since I'm the only person he plays online with.
 
[quote name='Vader582']Except those deals will now be most likely cost $10 more than before...[/QUOTE]


How do we know? Games go on sale all the time. Why make the automatic assumption that the Live member will automatically jump. Or that we will never be able to find them for $20-30.
 
I have about 18 months left on my XBL subscription but once that runs out I honestly don't know if I will pay for it anymore. I am a really hardcore gamer but I have 2 PS3's and love them both so I'm just not sure paying even $40 a year for XBL when I can play almost all those games for free on PSN is worth it anymore. When PSN eventually adds cross game invites and chat there will be almost nothing XBL has over PSN. The PS3 is just SUCH a better deal than the 360 at this point....and it's really not even close. If any of you out there are deciding between buying one of the two systems get a PS3, it's financially the responsible thing to do at this moment in time.
 
Well, that pretty much solidifies me not renewing... I barely use Gold as it is. Glad I never paid for any 'time'.
 
[quote name='Scorch']every single one of you will still buy the year subscription to xbox live.[/QUOTE]

This.

[quote name='Vader582']I wasn't considering a PSN+ account...until today. :lol:[/QUOTE]

Apples to oranges. PSN is still free, which includes purchases, online play, Netflix, facebook, and probably some other things I'm neglecting. PSN+ is a service that seems to offer...um, free/discounted stuff, I guess. I've thought about picking it up for the deals it offers, but haven't seen enough yet to plunge $50 on it. XBL is the service, and if you don't buy it, you don't get it. PSN+ is a coupon book for right now, as there are no online features (e.g., cross-game chat) or services that are exclusive to it. Hulu, I suppose, but that's still in beta so I'd be amazed if it stayed plus exclusive.

A few of you have mentioned that XBL has lost features in recent years - what has it lost? My gold sub ran out in May and I just moved to a new place where I can't reasonably set up my Xbox to play online (I ain't running a 40' ethernet cable across the room). So I haven't been on it in 4+ months. What's missing now?

EDIT: There's the hook. Just got an email about the price change as I was typing this, including this link: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/pricelock/default.htm

You can get 12-months of XBL for $39.99 for a limited time. Can you get multiples? I dunno.
 
[quote name='spid']How do we know? Games go on sale all the time. Why make the automatic assumption that the Live member will automatically jump. Or that we will never be able to find them for $20-30.[/QUOTE]
Have you seen many XBL point deals in the last year or so? I'm expecting the new XBL cards to be similar in their lack of sale pricing.

[quote name='mykevermin']Apples to oranges. PSN is still free, which includes purchases, online play, Netflix, facebook, and probably some other things I'm neglecting. PSN+ is a service that seems to offer...um, free/discounted stuff, I guess. I've thought about picking it up for the deals it offers, but haven't seen enough yet to plunge $50 on it. XBL is the service, and if you don't buy it, you don't get it. PSN+ is a coupon book for right now, as there are no online features (e.g., cross-game chat) or services that are exclusive to it. Hulu, I suppose, but that's still in beta so I'd be amazed if it stayed plus exclusive.

A few of you have mentioned that XBL has lost features in recent years - what has it lost? My gold sub ran out in May and I just moved to a new place where I can't reasonably set up my Xbox to play online (I ain't running a 40' ethernet cable across the room). So I haven't been on it in 4+ months. What's missing now?

EDIT: There's the hook. Just got an email about the price change as I was typing this, including this link: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/pricelock/default.htm

You can get 12-months of XBL for $39.99 for a limited time. Can you get multiples? I dunno.[/QUOTE]
I don't really think it's "apples to oranges" when you compare the 2 services. They are both leaders in the industry with services that are comparable. They're both hamburgers, just one is a Whopper and the other is a Big Mac.

Personally, I'd rather pay $50 for a coupon book and get some value out of the service. FB, Twtr, Kinect add no value to me.
I'll buy XBL cards if they're on sale. I have one last year sub card left that I picked up for $30 some time ago but if those sales disappear so will a lot of customers.
 
[quote name='spid']How do we know? Games go on sale all the time. Why make the automatic assumption that the Live member will automatically jump. Or that we will never be able to find them for $20-30.[/QUOTE]

Retailers have to discount games to clear up space for new games. They would never have to do that with live card
 
This is very arrogant. I let my live subscription drop off once I got back into PC gaming and this sort of seals the deal that I won't ever go back to the service. Sure it'd be nice to play Halo Reach online, but I really don't need this extra fee added on top of it. Games are too expensive as it is, enough with the price hikes.
 
There may be one (and only one) possible bit of good to come out of this -- MS stated that the remaining time on your Gold account will be tallied against the price of a family membership (supposedly at $99). Previously, your year subscription is worth a max of $50. After November, it will be a $60 value.

Microsoft should then supposedly pro-rate your remaining pre-paid time against a $60 value. So if you bought a year off Amazon for $35 (like I did) a short while ago -- say August 1, and move up to a family plan four months later (December 1), you should get credited for $40 -- a two-thirds value on the price of a year-long subscription. If you can get ahead and play it right, you may be able to "flip" subscription time.

Note that I said MAY.
 
Comment from Joystiq:

Why? You're asking WHY? The better question is how can you afford not to spend $60 on this amazing array of services!

- FREE Netflix Streaming! (free is calculated as $0 + $120/year for Netflix subscription)

- FREE ESPN3 Service! (assuming that your cable company has already paid the licensing fee for ESPN3, which means you don't need your XBox to view it)

- FREE VideoKinect! (Because the best way to roll out s family-friendly hardware peripheral is to bundle it with ChatRoulette)

- FREE LAST.FM! (Think Pandora, except after every two songs they crank up the volume so that Major Nelson can scream at you about some XBL promotion for 15 seconds)

- FREE Facebook/Twitter Integration! (LOL, the jokes just kind of write themselves now)
 
[quote name='mykevermin']Apples to oranges. PSN is still free, which includes purchases, online play, Netflix, facebook, and probably some other things I'm neglecting. PSN+ is a service that seems to offer...um, free/discounted stuff, I guess. I've thought about picking it up for the deals it offers, but haven't seen enough yet to plunge $50 on it. XBL is the service, and if you don't buy it, you don't get it. PSN+ is a coupon book for right now, as there are no online features (e.g., cross-game chat) or services that are exclusive to it. Hulu, I suppose, but that's still in beta so I'd be amazed if it stayed plus exclusive.

A few of you have mentioned that XBL has lost features in recent years - what has it lost? My gold sub ran out in May and I just moved to a new place where I can't reasonably set up my Xbox to play online (I ain't running a 40' ethernet cable across the room). So I haven't been on it in 4+ months. What's missing now?

EDIT: There's the hook. Just got an email about the price change as I was typing this, including this link: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/pricelock/default.htm

You can get 12-months of XBL for $39.99 for a limited time. Can you get multiples? I dunno.[/QUOTE]If you read over that link, it has this as a disclaimer on it:

[quote name='XBL $39.99 renewal']*Limit: One (1) per account. One year subscription at $39.99 for the first year with auto-renewal at the then current annual price following year one. Pricing details can be viewed in the Account Management area of your gamer profile. This offer expires on October 31, 2010 at 11:59 P.M. Pacific time. Applicable taxes not included. Open only to legal residents of the 50 United States. Not combinable with other Microsoft offers or rebates. [/quote]All that will do is prolong the $39.99 price for a single year, as the "auto-renewal at the then current annual price" means $59.99. Which locks you into auto-renewal, which you'll need to cancel to not get charged $59.99 for it at the same time in 2011.

The "40' Ethernet cord issue" is an easy one to fix, myke, though that's another conversation for another day. Happy to help with if it comes up at another point.

I think that we'll be sale-free until the end of the year and when we do see another one, it'll probably be $49.99 as the "sale" price going forward. I need to see how many additional cards I have from the eBay sales that Buy.com put up, to see how long I can keep paying sub $30 for Live.
 
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