As of Monday, an annual Xbox Live Gold subscription costs $60 a year, a 20 percent jump from Sunday, when it was $50. Microsoft is here to assure you that the inflation is in your best interest, and necessary for the company to keep pace with its rising costs to do something or other.
In a Gamasutra interview, a Microsoft marketing director rationalizes the price enhancement:
Back in 2002, we launched at 49 bucks, which works out to about $4.17 a month, and we’ve held steady for that entire time. Now what we’ve always been very passionate about is that quality needs to be there, but more importantly, the consistency. So if I’m playing Halo: Reach, Gears of War, Call of Duty, the consistency of the service and the experience needs to be there regardless of what that entertainment application is.So that has been critical. 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.
Now in 2002, it was strictly multiplayer gaming. 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.
To be fair, the internet, which also offers ESPN 3 and Netflix streaming access, raised its price 20 percent, from $0 to $0. So this all totally makes sense and is in no way price gouging.
Interview: Microsoft’s Davison On How Kinect Will Help Xbox Live Ramp Up [Gamasutra via Joystiq]
More From Consumerist
-
Xbox Twitter Support Has No Problem Implying You Have A Small Penis
-
Microsoft Apologizes For Loudmouthed Creative Director’s Tweets
-
Microsoft To Announce New Xbox Tomorrow; Sony Teases Video Of Playstation 4 Today
-
Microsoft’s New Streaming Music Service Is Free But Only If You’re Running Windows 8 Or RT
-
Microsoft Offers Free Month Of Service To Make Up For Recent Xbox Live Cloud Outage
Haha, I love it when services say “We’ve added new features and raised our prices, but those new features are FREE at no extra charge to all the customers who now have to pay a higher price. Free I tell you!”
And still almost no dedicated servers for games. Peer to peer hosting sucks.
This makes you wonder at all the complaints of Modern Warfare 2 concerning cheating and the like, as well as Bobby Kotick’s comments on charging more for nothing. I already pay for internet service. If a console game cannot enforce it’s own content, EULA, and quality without getting more of my money, I’ll stick to my PC, thanks.
…while at the same time disallowing companies from releasing free significant DLC packs (the recent Left 4 Dead 2 situation) and allowing companies like EA to charge an additional fee for an ‘Online Pass’ in addition to the Xbox Gold membership.
I appreciate the additional content, but Netflix isn’t free, so if you don’t have a subscription, there’s not a lot of value added.
If you’re paying 60/year or 50/year you’re not doing it right anyway. Buy the live cards for 30-40. Much more cost effective and you don’t get “price gouged”
Infrastructure costs? I think that Microsoft might want to visit this site: http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/default.aspx to see about some server consolidation options. Or maybe http://www.vmware.com/
I’d like to see a comparison between the two products to see which might be a better solution for their gaming datacenter.
i like how corporate places everywhere make “improvements” to customers/clients, but yet never consult with them…after all, how do they know what they want if they don’t seek them out ?
i’m glad i cashed in my xbox for ps3
if ps3 charged, i’d cash it in for a wii
yea, i will stick to my PC games they seem to know how to make it better
Its $10 more a YEAR, or $0.83 cents a month, if you are upset about this you need to get over yourself.
uhm…
The internet isn’t free–neither is netflix. What are you even saying? Where do you get online and have netflix streaming for $0? Must be Canadian prices. You’re a moron.
This is what it costs in Canada. Considering the US dollar is basically on par, it makes sense.