In addition to the XNA announcements this morning, it was also announced that LIVE will now be free for Games for Windows titles. Games for Windows dude Kevin Unangst made a post about it earlier today and linked off to the details here.
Awesome but I pay for Live for my Xbox 360 so in the end it never really would have been free for me anyways. This is good news though. I see alot more people getting into Games for Windows LIVE games.
Excellent news. I can't fathom who thought it would be a good idea to charge PC gamers to play online. Obviously it didn't take.
Now the obvious question is: If LIVE on PC can be free, why is LIVE on 360 still subscription-based?
Hey major i know this isn't related but how come i keep getting this message everytime i come back to your blog in firefox? "website certified by an unknown authority:
Unable to verify the identity of adsyndication.msn.com as a trusted site"
So when does Xbox Live become free?
Xbox Live needs to be free next. It's a great service, but with other consoles providing the same/similar service for free, I just can't see paying for it on Xbox Live anymore.
The online PC multiplayer environment is fundamentally different. Simply there are many competitors on PC who offered a free service that matched the features of GFWL. On consoles, no one has matched XBL. Not fanboy baiting. Others might be catching up, but the overall experience is superior and worth the $50 a year to me.
Here's my exact same comment that I posted on Gamerscoreblog...
I can't help but feel a little ripped off with my 50$ a year XBL subscription now...
GFW games retail for ~10$ less per titles than they Xbox counterparts
They'll be using our service for free(with the potential of
adding extra congestion) off the back of our subscription payments
The only advantage that Xbox users have now over GFW users is that our up-front cost for the processing power is a lot less than a comparable PC and the seperate audio channels for voice chat and music..
Live on Xbox will never be free. Its free on Windows because no one paid for it on there.
So what happens to the money that people paid towards a Live gold subscription just to play Windows games? Are they SOL?
Hey kids, let's sing along to some hits of the 90's!
"I won't pay, I won't paaaay, yeah! No waaaaaaay!
Now, now, why don't you get a job?"
WTF
Hows that fair, free on PC but not 360?
I don't see how anyone can see this as anything but good news. The kind of people that don't see this as good news are the kind of people who aren't able to see anything as good news.