Subscriptions are a tricky thing, especially in the video game industry. Thanks to World of Warcraft, $15 a month is now the standard fee for MMOs, but the console market is a different story. As of right now, only Microsoft has a mandatory subscription service (the PS3’s PlayStation Plus is optional), so they can pretty much price it however they want. Ever since the service launched back in 2002, the average price for a yearly rate was $49.99 for Americans, but as of November 1, 2010, this price is going up. The prices and the plans they affect vary across the board, but the US, UK, Canada and Mexico are seeing increases in all areas. The breakdowns are as after the jump:
Microsoft maintains that the price increases are justified by the value offered by the service with bonuses such as Twitter and Facebook integration, Last.fm and ESPN. Of course, depending on where you live, you might not get any of that, making the price hike seem like a slap in the face. If you renew your subscription right now, you can lock in your pricing for the next year at the current level. What do you guys think about this? Is it right from a consumer standpoint for Microsoft to raise the prices after so much time has passed? What about areas that don’t get all the fancy bells and whistles, like Mexico? Let us know!
Source and pricing breakdown image: Major Nelson
I’m from the UK and personally I don’t mind the increase (simply because I go for the 12 month which hasn’t been changed) but if it did affect me I wouldn’t be happy about it.
I just use my console as a gaming platform as do many people and I like to play online again as do many people so this means we have to pay for stuff we won’t use? (However if the UK ever got Netflix or ESPN I may use them) Maybe a payment tier system would be the way forward, one for offline play (currently silver), one for just online play and one for everything.
I’m quite interested to find out how Americans feel being the hardest hit.
Ugh. I’d never pay for 2 internet connections. Poor xbox users =/
FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!
Well it’ll be 60USD, so that’s a game a year. Hmmm, I mean I’ll still pay for it, but goddammit Microsoft – you greedy assholes. Don’t gimme none yo excuses, yo ass is greedy. Sheeit.
I’m not too happy about it, but they have added a lot to the service the past two years and with ESPN next year, a huge mic quality upgrade due out this year, along with Hulu in spring, I guess I can see the reason.
This sucks. I have no plans to use that Last.FM or ESPN feature. I use it to play games online and to be honest, cross game chat doesn’t really rock my world.
Meh, I may re-up before the increase, but I’m not impressed with this increase.
Yeah, they really do need to introduce some kind of tiered pricing for those of us that don’t use all of those features. But in the end, if you don’t want to pay more, just re-up now, so it’s not that big of a deal.
Anthony – I thought you liked cross game chat? It means you get to talk to me, amirite?
[quote comment=”13135″]Yeah, they really do need to introduce some kind of tiered pricing for those of us that don’t use all of those features. But in the end, if you don’t want to pay more, just re-up now, so it’s not that big of a deal.
Anthony – I thought you liked cross game chat? It means you get to talk to me, amirite?[/quote]
haha, yeah, that I love,lol. But other times, when trying to play a story intensive game like Mass Effect and this one friend of mine wants to chat about nothing at all, it can be annoying.
I’m kind of shocked by this, actually.
If Sony had any kind of an online plan they might be able to turn this into a big PR win, but they’re probably too busy thinking about which forgotten XS Sports PS1 title to add to PSN to be bothered with it.
[quote comment=”13143″]I’m kind of shocked by this, actually.
If Sony had any kind of an online plan they might be able to turn this into a big PR win, but they’re probably too busy thinking about which forgotten XS Sports PS1 title to add to PSN to be bothered with it.[/quote]
HEY! Theme Hospital is due anyday now!!!!!
Whereas in the UK we already have Theme Hospital!
What’s funny is looking at the uproar this seems to be causing in some other places. Glad everyone here is more reasonable. People need to remember that when you really break it down, the price is changing from $4 a month to $5 a month.
But when you break it down EVEN more, that’s 1 $ extra for every subscriber. Thats 20 000 000$ extra. So what are they going to do with the money ?
They should make a free subscription that let’s you play online, chat with other and use the store. And then paid subscription for all the other stuff I don’t need. Just like sony does, but with a lot more of MSFT’s special douchery.
I doubt there are 20 million XBL gold members. It’s probably less than half of that. But I see what you’re saying, even though that’s kind of getting beyond the scope of the discussion. I agree with you though that they need a tiered offering. I wouldn’t want it to be like PSN Plus, though, which essentially gives you “free” games that you can’t keep. But somewhere in between what it is and what they do could work.
Eddy makes a good point that this realistically only means about 1 dollar extra per month, which is pretty inconsequential.
Still, considering that so many gamers out there seem offended whenever they’re asked to pay for anything, I’m not surprised by the outcry.
I agree that they really should have a tiered membership plan. I don’t have a 360, but if I did, I probably wouldn’t want to pony up the money for Live because I really don’t play games online. But I would want to be able to access XBLA so I could download games.