A while back it was confirmed that the price of Xbox LIVE was to increase. The UK was barely affected, but the US saw an increase of $10 to their yearly subscription. Craig Davison, of Microsoft’s Xbox Live marketing, has been talking about why this increase is worth it.
“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.
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.”
I find myself both nodding and shaking my head simultaneously (ouch). Xbox LIVE was well overdue a price increase, and Microsoft should be congratulated for keeping the price fixed for so long bearing in mind how much the service has grown. The ‘exclusives’ argument is one I have to disagree with though. If CoD map packs, Gears and Halo are the only things that he can come up with, it’s a sad time indeed – surely there’s more than that?
Source: Gamasutra
stueeeee
After how the Playstation Network has developed over the last couple of years I don’t know how people can see this justified. Yes, MS provide a solid network some bells and whistles, and anyone who has it can tell themselves they are paying for quality but PS provides a great system structure and for the same current xbl price you can get plenty of free stuff from PS.
AJ
But I couldn’t care less about ESPN… Or any sport for that matter.
And it’s not like Live get’s map packs exclusively indefinitely… So… No the price isn’t even justified (to me) for what I use.
They really should have a check box that allows you to choose which features you’ll use. Because I would only use Live for the multiplayer and I just can’t justify paying $50 (and now $70?) just to play online.
Hello PS3.