11.11.09

You Get What You Pay For: My Confusion Over 360 Subscriptions



The 360 was the first ever console I picked up on day one.

While working at a game retailers, I sat down with the deputy manager the night before it launched and opened his 360 up and tried out Condemned and was amazed by the graphics (even on a SDTV). I put my machine aside with Perfect Dark Zero, Kameo and Condemned, picked it up at 5am and got home as soon as possible to plug it in and start playing. I reactivated my Xbox Live account without thinking about it, 40 British pounds disappeared straight away and I didn’t give it a moment’s hesitation.

That 40 quid could have just paid for my copy of Modern Warfare 2. Hell, if I shopped smart I could get MW1 and 2 for 40 quid. So why do people happily pay for this service?

A lot of people I know say they pay for the quality of service. These people either don’t play very much at Christmas or have never touched a PC games like Team Fortress 2, Quake 3, Counter-Strike or Unreal Tournament, all of which run great on PC's providing you have a good connection. All of those games are also free to play online once you've purchased the title.

So how did PC, PS3 and Wii all suddenly become crap online? Do people think something is less worthwhile if you aren’t paying for it? Are you getting less of a service because you aren’t paying for said service? Course not. PSN might not have as sleek an invite system and is painfully missing the fantastic cross-game chat feature and Wii is missing... well, just about everything, but PC is far better for online play than 360 could ever be because there aren’t any restraints.

360 users please, for the love of god, stop paying for Xbox Live.

Thanks to Herra Smith for her awesome header image. Expect to see more of her 3am offerings in future posts

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