Bombers right, paying for Xbox Live sucks.

Microsoft will no doubt make online play free and put ads in (they did just aquire Massive), but probably not until October or so, just so they can make as much an impact as possible right before Sony launches.

To be honest with you it makes no difference to me if it was free with ads or pay for gold. I personally think their service is great especially silver seeing as with xbox you only had one so I don' t mind paying for gold sometimes and having silver when I can' t have gold.
And again I think that you get some great stuff with gold...you can chat with a lot of people from a lot of different countries (and have a laugh at them), play in and compete in a lot of virtual arenas and the arcade games are cool. But as always I guess it' s down to personal choice.

Paying for xbox live sucks?
Wtf is you on majik?

If it was free,think of all kiddies or unserious gamers that would be playing xbox live online.
Now they can dl stuff but dont get in and ruin our games.
Sure everyone wants free online but it will also come at a cost with letting a lot of wrong people come in and play :(

ps! ofc it could be said the opposite on how many great players we miss out thaks to having a xbl fee,however the kiddies might ruin xbl if its free...im just warning you all.

If it was free,think of all kiddies or unserious gamers that would be playing xbox live online.

Hehe, it' s the kiddies and unserious gamers that epitomise XBLive atm! At least in my experience anyway.. [:' (]

I cant imagine how many more of them would flood live though if it was free!

ORIGINAL: QuezcatoL

Paying for xbox live sucks?
Wtf is you on majik?

That' s what i' d like to know. Anyhow I think for now it' s a good strategy to recoop and try to cover as much of the costs they have on the console by using that tactic, it might suck for some people but I honestly don' t think it' s anything like paying for a useless service because it all seems structured and most of all entertaining...saying that I think these days the majority look for quality stuff by the cheapest means people don' t even like buying cd' s now and download (illegally and legally) instead, my point is if the service is good and it delivers everything it promises why should it suck to pay for it?, everyone has a job to do and not many work for free so...

Making people pay for an online service is a tactic?!

It' s stupid and one of the admittedly very few things that pisses me off about Microsoft.

PC gamers don' t have to pay subscriptions unless they sign up to a MMO or whatever. They only have to pay for their internet.

Right now, i' m paying for my internet AND Xbox Live Gold membership, which isn' t expensive but is annoying. The updates and improvements coming to Xbox Live which will allow for a deeper structure, hosting your own servers and giving admin privlidges etc will make the online experience better than it is right now.

I don' t like playing with stupid teenagers who talk shit any more than you guys do, and that' s why i only play with people i know or people who the people i know know...

Why would i want to pay for anything if i could have it for free?!

If Sony make online play free (which i would guess they need to do to get the service up and running with lots of users) then Microsoft will certainly follow suit!

Obviously though if they did make it free I would have no objections ...and I hate playing against not just silly kids but sometimes (don' t know bout you guys) you get some really stupid people who only know to swear and trade disses about your mother over a game....oh and about how much diamonds and crap they have addmittedly mostly american.....anyway I think it will be nothing short of interesting to see sony' s move with the online play thing.

Xbox Live, PS-HUB
Wii WiiLL DESTROY THEM ALL!

I' m quite interested to see how Live will handle E3, what with all the coverage and HD vids they promise. If only you could play offline while your vids were downloading.

They' ll probably only give us vids of 360 stuff tho right? Maybe I' ll just get it all from Kikizo, heh.

ORIGINAL: choupolo

I' m quite interested to see how Live will handle E3, what with all the coverage and HD vids they promise. If only you could play offline while your vids were downloading.

They' ll probably only give us vids of 360 stuff too right? Maybe I' ll just get it all from Kikizo, heh.

Yeah I would have liked it to be able to play your games while you' re downloading to save time. As for the e3 thing should be very interesting to see how well they handle it, by the way does anyone know if they will stream it or pre-recorded?.

If xbox live was free there would be insane amounts of cheaters. They' ve banned tons of cheaters from xbox live and the vast majority of them are 14 year olds who use the 3 month free subscriptions so it doesn' t cost them anything. People don' t cheat with real accounts because they don' t want to have to buy a new one.

With PC games you don' t have to pay because all the game company really does is have a little server that other servers connect to to list the game and it barely costs them anything. With xbox live you have millions of people connected to the servers with saved voice and text messages that take up space and bandwidth on the servers. Is it really that bad to have to play 14 cents a day for that?

I don' t think it' s bad at all I think it works out something like £40 a year or something which if you think about it isn' t that bad in a lump sum it might sound so but a game roughly costs the same a lot of people are prepared to buy games play for a couple hours and leave it on the shelf. And I think live might even be getting an upgrade soon.

You can get a year for £30 at some online shops. What I don' t like is how you can' t cancel an account and stop paying easily. You have to phone them up or e-mail them, which sucks! I' ve been paying £5 monthly, but I' m not really using it atm. I' d like to be able to quit as easily as it was to subscribe!

lol I hate that that about a lot of people make it so hard just to unsubscribe but I thought you could just go to the 360 dashboard look at your membership and just downgrade to silver and remover your payment options?..dunno might be wrong.

By the way slightly off topic does anyone know how the hd-dvd players are going and why are they so bulky?.

There are plenty of options to upgrade on that membership screen, but not even a mention of cancelling subscription. I went onto the website and after much searching there too, found that you have to phone them up. I don' t have a landline at my flat, so that' s gonna cost me too! Thing is I' m sure I ticked an option to say ' don' t automatically re-bill me next month' when I signed up, but I might have imagined that ...oh well.

Not sure about the HD players though. I' m probably gonna wait it out before buying a dedicated player/add on for 360. Let the early adopters choose their fate!

Ok, so what do people think now that most of the big E3 announcements have, erm, been announced?!

Well for one, with sony releasing at such a high price point, M$ certainly have a much better chance of winning the west. Like moore and many have said, you can get a 360 and a wii for the price of a ps3. So that definately bodes well for the system - and given im totally poor atm and will be for a while with student loans, the 360 has become an even more considerable option.

Also with the exclusive title that is alan wake that looks to be a damn hott game, all the moore (Lame, i know, but couldn' t help myself) reason.

I' m not overly impressed with anything shown this year, though some games do look pretty neat.
Didn' t think too highly of halo 3, i think the trailer for halo 2 was way cooler. however sonic has certainly raised my eyebrow, I hope they make it optional to use other characters, like SA1.

We got confirmation from Boris Schneider-Johne (Senior Product Manager Xbox Platform and Accessories, Microsoft Germany) that a huge Dashboard Update will arrive at the end of may! It will feature a download manager for 6 parallel downloads in the background. He also mentions that there will be a lot more features in there but it will be a surprise and he won’t talk about
it! The downloads will also running while a game is played.

Update:

The user marks a file to download and it will be put in an active queue
downloadlist. There are 6 slots reserved in that queue. They will be
downladed sequentially not in parallel! If the Xbox360 sees there is
bandwith available it will boost the download speed up, if there. During
Online Sessions the downloads will be paused to garantee no lags. It’s also
possible to turn off the console, after powering it back on the downloads
will resume. When a download finishes the user will get a message that it
has been downloaded.

The bandwidth managmend looks like to be for lag free chats in the dashboard
or some other features which will be implemented additionally, i think so
cause during online sessions it will be paused anyway as he mentions in his
response to my questions.