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Release Dates

NEW RELEASES GRiD 2
Release date: 05/28/13

Fuse
Release date: 05/28/13

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Release date: 06/04/13

The Last of Us
Release date: 06/14/13

DAILY MANIFESTO

Xbox LIVE Price Hike: You're Paying For Exclusives

Posted on Tuesday, November 2 @ 07:00:57 Eastern by Anthony Severino

Along with yesterday's Xbox 360 Dashboard update came a price increase to Xbox LIVE's Gold subscription. Prices were increased on all variations of subscriptions plans, making the one month subscription $9.99 (from $7.99), the 3-month subscription $24.99 (from $19.99), and the 12-month subscription $59.99 (from $49.99).

With Xbox LIVE being around for a number of years, why is the price being increased now? One simple word: Exclusives. That's right, Microsoft is getting Xbox LIVE Gold subscribers to foot the bill for their exclusive deals.

"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. So there you go."

Do you mind paying for timed-exclusive content like last year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Map Packs that were available exclusively to Xbox 360 for 30 days? I think not.

[Eurogamer]

Tags: Xbox, Xbox 360, Live

Comments

mr-adriano
Joined: Jul 2009

Posted: Nov 2nd, 2010 at 7:23 am
PS3 gets exclusives and the service is free. It's not a better system, but at least they don't force people to pay for more than the game.

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warmaster670
Joined: Jun 2007

Posted: Nov 2nd, 2010 at 8:55 am
Last i remember we had plenty of exclusives before live, not to mention that you dont have to pay for live to play those exclusives.

Its like the people who try to jujstify paying for live with features you get with a silver account.

Not to mention who gives a rats ass if a game is exclusive? chances are, its not going to affect the game at all, except maybe not having as good of graphics.

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warmaster670
Joined: Jun 2007

Posted: Nov 2nd, 2010 at 8:56 am
really need comment editing, would be such a useful feature

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UglykitteN
Joined: Mar 2006

Posted: Nov 2nd, 2010 at 9:51 am
Once again, Penny Arcade to the rescue:

penny-arcade.com/2010/9/1/

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UglykitteN
Joined: Mar 2006

Posted: Nov 2nd, 2010 at 9:55 am
"But then I couldn't chat with whoever I wanted, when I wanted to chat with them. I couldn't form a game independent group to plan the evening's adventures, retain communications, or simply to mute every other person on the service. Invites don't manifest themselves in any kind of consistent form. These aren't little things - they're baseline functionality. It would be great if Sony offered a product this absolute, but they have chosen not to do so."

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BelgianROFLs
Joined: Jun 2008

Posted: Nov 2nd, 2010 at 10:13 am
@Warmaster, are you really going to continue this stupidity every time Xbox Live comes up? The reason Silver Xbox Live members get those features, is because they were developed using the funds from Gold members. Hence why PSN doesn't have equivalents: there are no gold PSN subscribers to cover the costs.

You seem to think that Microsoft develops features just because they really enjoy features. Or secures exclusives because they really like exclusives. Everything is a calculated business moved designed to attract more people to the console.

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Mcers
Joined: Mar 2009

Posted: Nov 13th, 2010 at 9:26 am
to hell with that i am not paying an extra $10 on something already overpriced because halo reach is out... i'll stick with my silver leftovers...

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