14 DAY TRIAL // With the (glitchy) launch of the 2010 Xbox Live Fall Update, Microsoft has just increased the price of the Xbox Live Gold Membership from 50 to 60 U.S. Dollars, a decision that, as you can imagine, hasn't exactly pleased fans.
Microsoft already admitted that this price increase was warranted by the new features that were added to the online service, and now, through the voice of Craig Davison, an Xbox Live executive, has once again explained the reasoning behind the new pricing.
According to him, the new features, plus the guarantee of exclusive downloadable content, like for Call of Duty or for Fallout: New Vegas, and the great platform exclusive games, like Gears of War and Halo, are more than enough to justify the extra 10 dollars.
"In 2002 it was strictly multiplayer gaming," Davison revealed. "Now we get those Call of Duty map packs before anybody else does. We've got Gears and Halo, of course, as exclusives. We continue to get exclusives on the service as well. And we've gone from 400,000 members in our first year to 25 million."
"So during that time, we've definitely got to fund it, and we want to add more and more and more. ESPN is a great example. No extra charge for Xbox Live Gold members. But we want to continue to bring that content in. We also want to continue to innovate on all dimensions, whether it's social, entertainment, or gaming. So there you go."
Davison also highlights the many improvements Microsoft made to Xbox Live behind the scenes, like upgrading the infrastructure, enhancing the support system or just making sure that there is as little downtime as possible.
"As you can imagine, the costs associated with maintaining a service at that level and making sure all of those features are consistent, we’re hitting that quality bar, we’re adding the customer service infrastructure necessary, we’re accommodating all of the same social features and functionality too, there’s a cost. Infrastructure costs, of course. And we’re continuing to bring more and more content."
What do all of you Xbox Live users think? Is Microsoft justified in increasing the price of the Gold subscription or should it just focus on launching better services instead of throwing money at developers for exclusive content?