Oh Microsoft, does your lust for our wallets know no bounds? Sony fanboys will likely be foaming at the mouth, ready to blast us for not having access to free online play, but I’ll tolerate it. Do you know why? Because it’s still the best online service available for gamers. Say what you will about our greedy, capitalistic overlords, but if the service weren’t worth the price of admission we wouldn’t already have a legion of 10 million gamers heartily enjoying it.
A lot of people are up in arms about the price hike and while I’m not a huge fan of shelling out more dough for the service, I suppose it’s less irritating than it would have been 5 years ago before Live offered the kind of services it does today.
It wasn’t too long ago that being on Xbox Live meant merely that you had the ability to play online with your friends. The cost served only as the means by which the pearly gates of online play would be opened. Now, however, a whole wealth of features dominate the Live landscape from Facebook and Twitter support to a complete online marketplace of multimedia content.
Do I like paying an extra $10? No, but I’m not about to abandon my love of the service either. On the contrary- I’ll be stocking up on as many of these as I can to counteract it.
