When we first got our Xbox 360, I was excited that you could play Uno online without having to upgrade to a Gold membership, which is basically $50 per year or less. I tried to get on yesterday and it wouldn’t let me. It turns out it was a holiday special Microsoft was running, and it is no longer free to play. At first this bothered me, but the more I thought about it I think the fee is a small price to pay for playability.
All I had to do was think back and remember trying to play games online in other free networks (such as Delta Force 2 on the PC,) and I’m glad they charge a small fee. It adds just enough deterrent to keep people from being complete jerks. When people don’t have to pay, they have no incentive to play nicely. They can register a free account, then wreak havoc by cheating, shooting team members, using vulgar language, and just general bad behavior. They are then free to switch back to their other account and play without anyone knowing any better.
With the Xbox Live, you have to be a paying subscriber to play online, and it is per identity, called a gamertag. Therefore if you want to jump online for a bit just to upset people, you’d have to register a new gamertag and pay to upgrade it to a gold account. They have free 30 day trials, but they limit that to 3 per console (life time) so it can’t be abused more than a couple of times at the most. Of course they could use their single gamertag they’re paying for, but there is a decent reputation reporting system so they wouldn’t be able to play with people any more.
My only remaining beef with it is that you can’t register more than one gamertag per Live account. Since we only have one console, my wife and I will never be able to use our accounts simultaneously. It seems like quite a waste for both of us to have to pay the yearly fee in order to build our own friends list and statistics. I wish they would do like Everquest and World of Warcraft and allow a limited number of gamertags under the same account. That way a family could have one membership and cover everybody. The way it sits a large family would pay more per year than the purchase price of the console if all of the kids had their own accounts as well.
I’m now anxiously awaiting the Gold subscription keys to arrive that came with some accessories I ordered. With as much entertainment value as we’ll get out of them, they are worth their weight… in gold.
13 January 2009, 17:02
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