Microsoft Could Raise the Xbox Live Gold Subscription Fee

The videogame industry has its share of speculators and fortune tellers, like any profitable business where tips are in hot demand. One of them, who has managed to make his voice heard and be taken into consideration, is Michael Pachter. This time, the Wedbush Morgan analyst predicts that Microsoft will give up on PC gaming but also that the subscription fee of the Xbox Live Gold will see an increase in the near future.

When asked by a fan what he made of the lack of games ported from the Xbox 360 to the PC the analyst replied that "It's a profit deal. Microsoft wants you to never play a game again on your PC and play everything on your 360." Pachter also added that "you give a PC gamer an incentive to buy a 360 if you put something that he really wants only on the 360." He didn't not cast empty words and he is ready to back his predictions with some deductive logic.

"You can't hook a guy into Xbox Live Gold if he's playing on PC. So, I mean, that's the other problem is you really wanna hook every gamer who has a 360, you want them to buy all their games on 360, play everything multiplayer, pay you 50 bucks a year so that in a couple years, it's 100 bucks a year. And that's going up - we all know that."

Michael Pachter made other predictions in the past and it's how well they turned out that makes his word carry some weight in the industry. This new statement doesn't seem far-fetched either and it's hard to find a flaw in his logic. It may be true that right now Microsoft is the only one that charges for their online services, but then again it's not like they haven't already tried to increase the price on their subscriptions. The Gold memberships went up with the addition of Netflix streaming and now with promises of Facebook integration, the price could spike again.