Xbox Live

Xbox Live is a great service, it's the best console multiplayer experience. I don't fault it at all for this. However, I question whether Xbox Live should really be pay-to-play.If we look at the PC as a gaming machine, multiplayer (with the exception of MMOs) has always been free. Releases of popular contemporary games, (CoD4, Team Fortress 2, etc) have had free multiplayer built in. What's the sense in paying for Xbox Live, shelling out a good $50-60 for something we've always had for free as a PC gamer.

Multiplayer is usually the meat of any good game. The Halos, CoDs, Gears of Wars all have great singleplayer, but after the 10 or so hours that it takes to complete the singleplayer campaign, what has really made these games great is their multiplayer. I can't tell you how many hours I personally have spent pwning some noobs in multiplayer. There's simply no comparision in the challenge between singleplayer and multiplayer.Multiplayer is really a necessity, it really lengthens your $60 for a game. With singleplayer, you can usually ike out about 10-15 hours of gameplay before being totally bored. With multiplayer, you can get 100+ hours of enjoyment, and still keep being entertained.

I think perhaps the greatest investment I've made is Warcraft 3 + The Frozen Throne for $50. This game has got me easily 2000+ hours of gameplay over a few years, and I still keep playing it because it's still fun. What's perhaps the most remarkable thing is, I've never even touched the singleplayer. I play solely online, with Blizzard's Battle.net system, and play custom maps (ie. mods), like the very popular Defense of the Ancients (DotA).So if multiplayer is such an integral part of the game, why isn't it free? There is really no difference in the cost between a console game and a PC game. The multiplayer matches are all hosted by private users, and the only cost to the developer is a master server to ensure users are playing licensed copies of the game. Rival services (Playstation Network) offer free online play, albeit without the quality of Xbox Live, but why are we paying for a service that's always been free?