MS Raise Xbox Live Price

Dan Lee 51 Comments

Microsoft’s Major Nelson has just announced that as of November 1st there will be some changes to the price of your Xbox Live subscription.  These are as follows;

He also had the following to say;

“Since launching Xbox LIVE in 2002 we have continually added more content and entertainment experiences for our members, while keeping the price the same. We’re confident that when the new pricing takes effect, an Xbox LIVE Gold membership will continue to offer the best value in the industry.”

Source: Major Nelson

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51 Comments

  1. Thank god I’ve already got it sorted until next September!

  2. Keeping the same price since 2002 despite adding more & more stuff is pretty amazing, although I can imagine what some of the comments are going to be

    The current £40 is actually available for £27.99, so it won’t have too big an effect

    • Yep – keeping the price the same for so many years is good. The comments so far are essentially “what is being added to Live to justify the increase?”

    • only really affects the US, if you note the caption to the image.

    • It may have been the same price, but most of the cost of XBox Live, like bandwidth and servers have gone down in price in that time.

      • good point well made. But it does depend on some of the extra features they’ve added, like the sports coverage, which would then add a lot of bandwidth on top.

        Still, it’s not like XBL didn’t bring in a $1,000,000,000 in revenue last year. That’s even taking into account all the wholesale pricing they give to retailers with the XBL cards.

      • Don’t forget the huge amount of obnoxious adverts they’ve been adding to the Dashboard… some of them complete with sound! Those must be making Microsoft a fortune, especially since they’ve been made hugely prominent with the NXE.

        I don’t think I’d be so pissed about Xbox Live pricing if MS would let Gold members turn off ads.

    • At the end of the day, they’re upping the price of something which is completely free elsewhere on the market. You can argue that Live has more going for it than PSN, but not enough for such a price to be tagged to it imo. I spent a good few years using ONLY the 360, and after moving to PS3 the only thing I’ve actually missed about Live is voice chat, but I’m sure it’ll arrive sometime in the near future. PSN is also evolving at a rapid rate, but that doesn’t mean Sony will start charging an arm and a leg for it, and that’s the way it should be.

      • Quote:
        “We’re confident that when the new pricing takes effect, an Xbox LIVE Gold membership will continue to offer the best value in the industry.”
        Free is the best offer in the industry period!
        @CC £27.99 isn’t a lot over a 12 month period sure, but you cant beat free. I’ve had nearly 3 years of PSN access and I’ve not paid a penny for it. (Excluding PSN+)

      • “At the end of the day, they’re upping the price of something which is completely free elsewhere on the market”

        the thing is, the features, stability, availability and quality of xbox live takes a shit over psn and whatever the wii thing is… its well worth the price.

      • I put thousands of hours into playing 360 online, so don’t say anything about stability, it doesn’t exist. For me, right now, the content on PSN is far more suited for me than anything on Live. And like I already said, the only thing I miss is voice chat. But for you to say it ‘takes a shit’ on PSN, is basically horse shit, it simply isn’t true.

    • If you dont mind me asking, were can you buy the £40 Live card for £27.99, I need to renew soon, cheers. :)

    • CC, I can’t understand why you defend Xbox Live so much when you don’t even own an Xbox yourself. Trust me, these features you speak so highly about are not all that great. Only thing they really have is better online gameplay which just so happens to be plagued with hackers and cheaters.
      Face book for Xbox is just stupid, because it’s a lot better on the computer, and the upcoming ESPN app, is pointless. All I have to do is change the channel on my T.V. If Live was around $30 then I would be happy. But 60$? That’s the price of a new game. I don’t want to pay $60 for Halo: Reach and then pay another $60 just to play the biggest part of it. Sure I get those extras, but what if I don’t care for them?
      Honestly the best thing about live (other than online gaming) is cross game chat. I’d say that’s about it.

    • I’m actually comparing it to World of Warcraft where, as far as I know, the price of subscription hasn’t changed but where they added tons of content. I might be wrong..

  3. Interesting that this change only really affects the US and people living hand to mouth, one month at a time…
    Also interesting that it doesn’t affect the Euro at all…

    Quite a strange move from MS there, perhaps this is their way of adjusting for exchange rates? RRP for 12M in the UK is £40, so $60 is the right ratio there now…

    Did the prices change a few years back up or down? This could do with a little more investigation, writing crew.

    • It effects everybody, UK is an extra £12.00 a year. In the great scheme of things it’s not a lot extra, but it’s an extra expense nevertheless. £72.00 a year is becoming a lot of money at a time when money is running out.
      Then there’s the alternative – PSN, completely free.
      Neither sytem is perfect, but would you rather pay for it or get it for free?
      A lot of people might be asking themselves that very question now.
      Sure you can buy 12month cards at a much reduced price, but that means your are tied to MS for another 12 months, no matter what MS do or don’t do to their service.

  4. Time to start converting all your money to pesos gentlemen! :D

  5. PSN….still the bargain price of……….hmmm……… Zilch,nothing,free… Zero pounds and zero pennies

    • i only have a PS3, but from what I hear, XBL is a vastly more stable and easily coded platform to the PSN. how many times have you encountered unable to connect errors, or could not find game messages?
      I think if we paid for the PSN, which I was hoping PS+ would partly contribute to, we would have a network that is much more reliable, that developers can easily cater for, so far as getting friends to connect to other friends goes.

      • I think what Sony would like to do is up the stablility and such across both PSN and PSN+ with PSN+ staying as the additional content pass it currently is.

      • Exactly.

        While it’s great that online play is free on PSN, and any increase in price sucks as a consumer, i’m not bothered by this at all.

        I spent the 1 1/2 years, countless hours on google and 3 modems trying to get the right NAT type on my PS3 so that ic could send/receive invites on my PS3. All the while not having a single issue on LIVE while obviously using the same modem/settings.

        I use both systems often (more so the PS3 latley)and as a subscriber to both PSN+ and LIVE Gold, evean @ $60 i think LIVE is better value, because i still can’t justify the cost of PSN since it adds no new features (besides auto updates which more of a convienece than a full feature).

        So $60 for live which gives me private & Party chat (which is a big deal to me personally as i use them pretty much every time i’m on LIVE) and a more stable and user friendly network. $50 for PSN+ to get minor discounts on things i dont want and a free psn game that i dont want. While i dont regret signing up for PSN+ as i like to support the industry any way i can, i still feel that LIVE is worth the price where PSN+ isn’t (yet).

    • Nat types? Modems? What you on about mate lol

      I’ve been using psn for bout 3 years now, wirelessly with my bog standard virgin router and modem,… And never had a problem?? Just used bog standard settings…job done.. So has my brother who coincidentally moved from xbox to psn.

      Ok i’ve had the odd error or game disconnent but nothing on a monthly basis that would ever justify paying 40 odd quid for xbox Iive!

      Plus I like the fact of vidzone for free, life @ playstation so I can do my good deed for the day, and home is q very good concept not my cup of tea but enjoyed the live perferomances and the e3 stuff.

      3 years on still not a penny spent to play my games online!! And hopefully should be the saying the same thing again in another 3 years time!!

      • NAT type 1/2/3. i still don’t understand it.

        when it works it works, but I’ve used Tiscali/talktalk and BT homehubs with standard settings and been plagued with connection troubles. I have massive issues getting a friend to join me in Bad Company 2,and will always have a disconnect within the first 20mins of my session. Similar issues with GTA, Red Dead, K&L2, Uncharted 2, even LBP, and not to mention Super SF4 where I am unable to join a lobby, but if I play an arcade game with fight request on, people can join me.

        The thing with XBL is, it seems to enable a standardised way for users to connect to each other, which I am envious of since the PS3 doesn’t like my choice of ISP or router.

  6. So for 1 Month its a 125% increase for the US and 120% for the UK. At least the UK is getting a better deal, but to be fair, its only £1 per month more.

    • Your wording is wrong, or your numbers. :)
      A 125% increase would mean the cost had gone up from 100% to 225%, see?
      So either it’s a 25% increase, or that it is now at 125% of the previous price.

      No worries, I’ll be pernickety for you all day long if you like :P

  7. Makes me kind of glad I just recently sold my 360, with nothing on the horizon which interests me I figured why not sell and put the credit into the PS3.

    Disappointed for everyone else though. It’s especially disappointing when Microsoft haven’t added any new super duper features or cordially announced it.

    • Thought I’d not seen you online for a while!

      • Apologies mate :)

        You have my PSN right? Hope we can do some MP on something towards Christmas. ^^

      • Yeah I’ve got you as a friend on PSN. Not been on it much lately as I’ve had a bit if a backlog of 360 games to get through but when Move comes out I will probably be on it a lot more (heavy Rain, Resi Gold and LBP 2 are on my list).

      • Very cool selection, I have the first two, and while I’m not massively into LBP2, I know for a fact the TSA community will make worth twice the price.

  8. Back when I had a gold membership I didn’t think it was really worth it as I didn’t seem to get anything for my money beyond the “privelage” of being allowed to play games I have already paid for online, something I get to do for nothing on every other gaming platform I own.

    Now they’re actually RAISING the price of it at a time when they should realistically be looking at either lowering it or doing away with the subscription fees altogether, as rumours flying around for years have always suggested they were on the verge of doing?

    It’ll certainly be interesting to see how my mates react to this, as most of them still pay for Xbox live, but personally, this makes the prospect of rebuying a 360 at some point a bit less appealing than it already was.

  9. It’s hardly surprising though, seeing how passionately many gold subscribers defend this business model.

    • I think it’s fair to have customers pay for the maintenance of a network, but it’s unfair to have different levels of membership in the Gold and Silver model. When you buy a console you should enter into a contract where you pay the “network rental” every year, and in return for your guaranteed subscription you only have to pay £20 a year. for PS3 and XBox.

  10. They can get away with it. They can…

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