Topic: The Xbox 360 Thread

I'll be happy if it would just stop going to the "Spotlight" page/tab as default when you exit a game.

So, Microsoft is raising the price of Xbox Live Gold. They just lost a customer. I'm sure there will be more.
http://kotaku.com/5625516/xbox-live-price-increase-coming-nov...

To me, it's not even that they are raising the price. If they did that for a good reason, that's fine. But crappy reasons such as "the additional services available to Gold subscribers in 2010, such as ESPN, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Last.fm and Video Kinect", I refuse to pay. I don't use any of these features, I use my gaming console for gaming. They should just add an additional fee for each of these services.

Yeah, this is total BS. It's just Microsoft being greedy as usual. They do it just because they know they can get away with it. I guess it's time for me to stock up on some cheap 12 month cards online.

I don't like the price increase, but I also don't mind paying for something if it's good and Xbox Live is the best online service available by a large margin. Nothing else comes close. And with likely only a year or two left in the console's lifespan, just do what Wolf said and snatch a few 12 month cards and call it day.

No doubt it's plenty annoying. MS should use a tiered approach in my opinion.

As a side note, if you buy the subscription cards at retail price you're getting suckered. I've bought plenty on eBay (for myself and friends without an eBay account) for 20-30% less.

Annoying crap aside, Shank is pretty freaking awesome.

Annoying. But honestly, it still comes down to only $5 a month.
Granted, i rarely play online, so maybe i'll let my Gold subscription run out and just say screw it.

Luckily, only the 1 month is only raising $1 in Canada. We are already supposed to be paying $60 for 12 month, although I think a lot of people buy online or wait for sales.

What do you lose if you skip out on Gold membership and stick with Silver? Online support for multiplayer (all games, or just some?) and some occasional early releases of DLC, right? And some of the upcoming stuff (ESPN Live, Hulu+), i think? I don't think i'll really mind if i drop it, but i could go either way.

Any info on the differences (or pointing me to where i could find them) would be appreciated.

I'm pretty sure you would lose out on Last FM, and the ESPN content I think is gold only. I believe Hulu might be an additional fee on top like with the PS3, but don't quote me on that.

Netflix, ESPN, LastFM, Zune, Facebook, Twitter, videoKinect, Hulu Plus, and some multi-player functionality. I'd wait for a second opinion though as I'm not 100% sure on all of those.

Oh and this link talks about a few more differences between gold/silver:
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/goldBenefits.htm

I don't use any of the extra features and I don't play competitive multiplayer. I've used XBL a lot over the last 3 years or so for some awesome coop experiences that were either exclusive or games my PC couldn't handle; sadly there isn't a game on the horizon in that category that interests me.

As such I was already on the fence about renewing, MS just went and made my decision an easy one.

To any UK 360 users.

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts n Bolts is £10 at Morrisons as well as Halo Wars being about the same price (it WAS £8 at Morrisons but they've raised it by another £6 since...).

Also I think you can find Resonance of Fate for as little as £15 in some GAME/Gamestation stores.

Ahh, thanks. Aside from the occasional online multiplayer, not a single one of those things is important to me to have on my 360.

I might pick up L4D today. It seems like a series I might enjoy, but I don't want to jump into the (more expensive) sequel, because I might not like it. Is it a good game?

Also, I told my mainstream FPS only "gamer" friend that Black Ops is more expensive for no reason. He actually tried to defend Activision. Crazy, right?

L4D looks too fun.
I wish I had an Xbox360 right now just to play some L4D online.

I like L4D quite a bit. Hearing the Witch crying is just freaking...well...freaky. I've got 1 co-worker who also has it and we've played online about three times. I've put barely 15 hours into the game and am no expert by any means and almost all of my experience has been single-player.

I'm always down with trying to find some "new" players that are equal in skill to myself (read: suck) to do some L4D online.

I love Left 4 Dead, one of the best games of the generation and one of the best coop games ever IMO. Frankly I like it quite a bit more than the sequel which added more content but lost a lot in the process.

It's fun enough single player or even split screen with 1 friend but a 4 player game online is where the real meat of the game is and in spite of only having 4 maps (+ a DLC 'half map') my friends and I easily spent 100 hours on the game.

If you or anybody else is looking for another person for L4D online just send me an invite (GT: EarthViper). I'll be down for that game pretty much anytime for as long as I keep XBL Gold.

And of course, they didn't have the game I am looking for. :/

Even though i barely played it, i thought L4D was definitely awesome. I just didn't have enough people i know to play it with, and i despise playing with random people on XBLA (and i'm not that big of an online multiplayer gamer in general, anways).