Did you guys know you could play Social playlists w/o having a Gold member account? My gold just expired but it still lets me play social.

Had no idea but thats pretty cool!

i'm gonna check this out. my gold just expired today as well. thanks for the heads up.


* didn't work for me. i couldn't enter matchmaking w/o a gold account.

I am not positive, but I think after your gold expires, there is some sort of "grace" period.

As the playstation3 gains momentum and builds it user base of free online players.. I think MS will be eventually forced to adopt some type of free based play on XboxLive.

I think a model they could offer is free social play. But to use the chat/messenger/voice enabled/video/text message/rank/stats features you need to use gold.

I am not positive, but I think after your gold expires, there is some sort of "grace" period.

well my gold expired today... so i can pretty much confirm there is no grace period.

As the playstation3 gains momentum and builds it user base of free online players.. I think MS will be eventually forced to adopt some type of free based play on XboxLive.

I think a model they could offer is free social play. But to use the chat/messenger/voice enabled/video/text message/rank/stats features you need to use gold.

The PS3 needs to offer something more than "free" to be competitive. Because really, that's what it's worth anyway. I think people would be upset to have to pay for that service.

Yep. I'm willing to pay for good service....and Xbox Live is good service. Heck I have free cable modem through my association but I pay $40 a month for DSL because its way better and more consistent.

As the playstation3 gains momentum and builds it user base of free online players.. I think MS will be eventually forced to adopt some type of free based play on XboxLive.

I think a model they could offer is free social play. But to use the chat/messenger/voice enabled/video/text message/rank/stats features you need to use gold.
it sounds like a good idea on the surface, if you add on-line play and voice enabled to the list of things for free, but i doubt it would work because most of the other things are just benefits and people aren't going to pay $50 a year for something like rank and stats that most people know don't really mean a single thing. as far as chat and messenger and video, most people can do that on their cell phones for pennies, another reason they're not going to spend $50 a year to do that with perfect strangers across the other side of the country...

The PS3 needs to offer something more than "free" to be competitive. Because really, that's what it's worth anyway. I think people would be upset to have to pay for that service.

It's funny, because everything on XBL that is NOT gaming can be done for free with a Silver account. Achievements, messaging, downloading, RSS feeds of your gamerscore, chatting, whatever. It is all free. So what you are paying for is the ability to get online and play games, but the online and play games part of XBL is distinctly inferior to PSN, thanks to Microsoft's refusal to set up dedicated servers and relying on everything peer to peer.

I am NOT trolling, I have a Gold sub and use it almost every day, the point is that we are paying $50 not for an excellent online service (because that is free) but for the ability to connect peer to peer to other players. It's a shaky business model.

Considering the amount of time I am on-line, $50/year is a fantastic value. Sure, it would be better if it were free but think about what else you spend money on

For example, when I go to Myrtle Beach in the spring each year I easily pay about $150/per round for 4 hours of golf.

Two HD-DVD movies can easily set you back $50.

Dinner for two.

Movies for the entire family.

4 tickets to the Red Sox game, food, parking; several hundred dollars.

Etc., etc., etc...

I think they should really consider lowering the price or removing it completely. I orginally thought SIlver could play on line but you need gold to download things. yea i know the yolks on me :(

This has actually happened to me on few occasions.

I signed my nephews up for 1 month Gold accounts in the fall when Halo came out. We were playing a lot of ranked team matches until the 1 month period ended.

I have a Gold account they have expired Gold accounts that are now Silver.
Since that time we have been able to play a few times in team social matches but not ranked team matches.

I think this is a screw up because it doesn't happen all the time. I know about free Gold weekends and such, but I don't believe there was a promotion like that going on last weekend. (We were able to play on Saturday but not Sunday. Again, only in player matches, no ranked games)

I had this happen on Perfect Dark as well a year or two ago.

We got excited and thought maybe they were letting silvers play in social matches as long as someone in the party had a gold account.

It's funny, because everything on XBL that is NOT gaming can be done for free with a Silver account. Achievements, messaging, downloading, RSS feeds of your gamerscore, chatting, whatever. It is all free. So what you are paying for is the ability to get online and play games, but the online and play games part of XBL is distinctly inferior to PSN, thanks to Microsoft's refusal to set up dedicated servers and relying on everything peer to peer.

I am NOT trolling, I have a Gold sub and use it almost every day, the point is that we are paying $50 not for an excellent online service (because that is free) but for the ability to connect peer to peer to other players. It's a shaky business model.

I actually agree, honestly as soon as Sony gets in-game XMB access (confirmed for sometime this year) so we can message in game then the PSN will be every bit as good as XBL as far as I'm concerned. Add to that we'll eventually see the PSN store get an overhaul (this has to happen, the whole thing is just to slow and convoluted at the moment) and Home by Q4 and the PSN will be every bit as good, if not better, than Live. For the record this is coming from someone who does the majority of his online gaming on Live.

As the playstation3 gains momentum and builds it user base of free online players.. I think MS will be eventually forced to adopt some type of free based play on XboxLive.

I think a model they could offer is free social play. But to use the chat/messenger/voice enabled/video/text message/rank/stats features you need to use gold.

There are 360 originals like Halo that you need XBL for, PSN doesn't seem to have many online titles that I'm interested in. Maybe Warhawk, but even then it seems like an unfinished game IMO. It's great for what it is, but it seems lacking.

I don't think MS has to offer free. It's a great service and it is much more user friendly than PSN IMO. It is really polished, but that could be because the OG Xbox originated XBL. IMO you can't really enjoy the 360 without XBL. Simple things as private chatting with friends is much more enjoyable on the 360. Unless Sony almost 100% copies XBL, XBL is worth every cent.

I actually agree, honestly as soon as Sony gets in-game XMB access (confirmed for sometime this year) so we can message in game then the PSN will be every bit as good as XBL as far as I'm concerned. Add to that we'll eventually see the PSN store get an overhaul (this has to happen, the whole thing is just to slow and convoluted at the moment) and Home by Q4 and the PSN will be every bit as good, if not better, than Live. For the record this is coming from someone who does the majority of his online gaming on Live.

no it won't. not even close. Nothing is unified, everything is game dependent. The download speeds are terrible, the wifi is pretty bad on my PS3. Sony (a company that own music, tv and movies!) pales in comparison to available online media. PS3 system updates are hundreds of megabytes to download and need to be installed afterwards taking upwards of an hour in some cases, where xbox patches load automatically and takes mere seconds, no install.
I could go on but I won't, Xbox Live is the premier service for console gamers, and has been for 5 years, Sony has promised online services for years and is just starting to get a handful of sporadic features.

It's funny, because everything on XBL that is NOT gaming can be done for free with a Silver account. Achievements, messaging, downloading, RSS feeds of your gamerscore, chatting, whatever. It is all free. So what you are paying for is the ability to get online and play games, but the online and play games part of XBL is distinctly inferior to PSN, thanks to Microsoft's refusal to set up dedicated servers and relying on everything peer to peer.

Most of the PSN games are peer to peer. There are a few games that have servers. But most publishers don't want to pay for servers for an indefinite amount of time. For that matter, most won't pay for them forever. They will go away eventually.

Oh, and the act of actually getting a game together on Live is vastly superior to PSN due to the simple fact that you can chat from within any game to a player in any other game. Not to mention that you can accept invites from any game and read messages from within any game.

And for some reason, Sony doesn't push their game programmers to actually include online play in a lot of their games.

i prefer peer to peer, sure its not as reliable or as low latency, but what happens when the dedicated servers go away and thats all the game allows connections for? game over?

also, what happens when your latency to a dedicated server is high? permanent laggy games? at least with peer to peer the laggy games are minimal, and someone else will be host the next go-round.



edit: this doesnt mean i LIKE paying 50 bucks for it, but i'm not unhappy with the service, or the value i get from the cost.

Great, another topic that has devolved into "I'm too cheap to pay a tiny amount of money for a ridiculously good service."

As a longtime PC and PS2 gamer, I can safely say that the ~2 dollars per month I pay for XBL is one of the best values I've gotten on anything in my entire life, and I'm a freakin' deal hunter.

Its cause people stopped playing

Its cause people stopped playing

Where? On the PS3?

no it won't. not even close. Nothing is unified, everything is game dependent. The download speeds are terrible, the wifi is pretty bad on my PS3. Sony (a company that own music, tv and movies!) pales in comparison to available online media. PS3 system updates are hundreds of megabytes to download and need to be installed afterwards taking upwards of an hour in some cases, where xbox patches load automatically and takes mere seconds, no install.
I could go on but I won't, Xbox Live is the premier service for console gamers, and has been for 5 years, Sony has promised online services for years and is just starting to get a handful of sporadic features.

I disagree, JMO but I don't really care if anything is unified. Give me my games, give me a list of servers to play on, and let me communicate with my friends and I'm good. The PS3 does all but the last one and that's soon to change with the in-game XMB access getting patched in. O and it all runs very nicely, rarely have server connection issues.

Dunno what your problem with system updates are, the PS3s firmware updates have made it a far superior machine to the one it was at launch. None of the major updates take a whole lot longer to download and install on my PS3 than they do on my 360 either. Also not sure how you can knock the PS3s "crappy wireless" when the 360 doesn't have wireless at all. Download speeds are about equal on both machines for me as well, may wanna check your connection.

As far as multimedia goes I agree Sony has some work to do but I was talking strictly from a games standpoint. Like I said I'm a Live subscriber and love the service but once the PSN gets in-game XMB Live isn't gonna have a huge benefit over the PSN in the game department. And we still have Home on the way which holds a lot of potential. Just so everyone remembers Live wasn't perfect when it launched either.

When I first opened my ps3 last month, it took hours for me to play my first game since I had to download updates and install the game.

I do agree, that psn is horrible as well as their store. As of now, I just use my ps3 to fold.

My friend was on his ps3, and he had to back out of the game to send this guy a message that was running his mouth to him. He had just beat heam at a game. By the time the message was sent off, the other guy completely forgot who he was, so it was pointless.

It takes me under 30 seconds to download an XBox firmware update.

It took me 30 minutes to download and then subsequently install my PS3's firmware update.

It also took me on the order of 6 hours to download the ratchet and clank demo, which is 1.6GB. Then it takes additional time to install the demos, which, after waiting 6 hours can tend to get even more frustrating.

My 360 has never taken that long for any download. I have a 5Mbit connection.

I'm not alone in my PS3 download speed issues, either. Lots of other people have slow downloads, too. I do know that lots of people do get fast speeds. I can't explain it.

I like the old adage that simply says, "you get what you pay for."

I'm with Freebagel on this one. We're not talking about $50 a month, we're talking $50 a year. If that's a huge bite in your monthly budget, maybe you should be worrying about something else other than playing video games.

As a longtime PC and PS2 gamer, I can safely say that the ~2 dollars per month I pay for XBL is one of the best values I've gotten on anything in my entire life, and I'm a freakin' deal hunter.

Amen! I would like to see dedicated servers on Live though.

Amen! I would like to see dedicated servers on Live though.

I'm pretty sure that some games have dedicated servers on Live. Like Burnout Paradise or other EA games. Funny, but people don't tend to like EA's servers. :)

First of all, I am a Gold subscriber. I also game on the PSN. There is very little that XBL has that PSN does not have (that is related to playing games online). They are such similar experiences that the whole argument is pretty much a wash.

What is important is to ask yourself why you should have to pay $50 a year for a few extra features when there is a FREE alternative? My Gold membership is almost out and I am trying to think of a good reason to renew my subscription, but there are only a few games that are MS exclusives that I want to play online. Is that really worth $50 a year?

Not sure what I am going to do yet, but I am not compelled to open up my wallet to MS just because someone says "I'm too cheap to pay a tiny amount of money for a ridiculously good service." Maybe the reality is "I'm smart enough to realize that there is a perfectly good FREE alternative".

I'm with Freebagel on this one. We're not talking about $50 a month, we're talking $50 a year. If that's a huge bite in your monthly budget, maybe you should be worrying about something else other than playing video games.

It's not that $50 a year is a huge amount of money, it's that every time it comes time to renew my subscription it seems incredibly inconvenient. Take right now, I want to buy Mass Effect, CoD4 (though I may avoid this so as not to lose my life to it), and R&C. Already a hefty amount of money to spend on those games and right now I can't really swing the money for any new games (poor college kid) and as luck would have it I had to renew Live which is just enough money to eat up the funds to purchase any new games. Then I look over at the PSN and realize "Hey, I get the same thing on this network as I do on Live for free". It's jedimastergrant said, why pay any amount of money for a service when an equally good service is available for free. The only reason I'm sticking around is because I have friends who play only on XBL.

I'm curious, for those with experience with both systems, like myself, what advantage will XBL hold over the PSN once in-game XMB access is here? Because as far as I can tell there's nothing.

I'm curious, for those with experience with both systems, like myself, what advantage will XBL hold over the PSN once in-game XMB access is here? Because as far as I can tell there's nothing.

I think you can only answer that once in game XMB access comes. We don't know what features it will have or how well it will work. It has been a year and a quarter since it became painfully apparent that it is needed, right?

It seems to me that Microsoft had enough planning and forethought to put all the really useful online features in right up front. They have been there for over 2 years, now. I appreciate that planning. It is what has given us a great gaming experience WAY ahead of every other system out there.

With Sony, it always seems like it is an afterthought, and then they have to make some sort of compromises to get it to work right. For example, do you know if every game is going to work perfectly with in game XMB? Are all existing games going to be compatible with it, or will it only be future games, due to increased OS memory footprint? If it was all in the system when it launched, the programmers would have known what to target in terms of features. Too many questions to call it right now.

I've had my PS3 for a few weeks, now, and I'm just not all that impressed with it. Too many things about it are far too PC like. Pretty nice blu ray player, though. It makes Ratatouille look nice. :)

I think you can only answer that once in game XMB access comes. We don't know what features it will have or how well it will work. It has been a year and a quarter since it became painfully apparent that it is needed, right?

It seems to me that Microsoft had enough planning and forethought to put all the really useful online features in right up front. They have been there for over 2 years, now. I appreciate that planning. It is what has given us a great gaming experience WAY ahead of every other system out there.

With Sony, it always seems like it is an afterthought, and then they have to make some sort of compromises to get it to work right. For example, do you know if every game is going to work perfectly with in game XMB? Are all existing games going to be compatible with it, or will it only be future games, due to increased OS memory footprint? If it was all in the system when it launched, the programmers would have known what to target in terms of features. Too many questions to call it right now.

I've had my PS3 for a few weeks, now, and I'm just not all that impressed with it. Too many things about it are far too PC like. Pretty nice blu ray player, though. It makes Ratatouille look nice. :)

I've wondered about that myself honestly, there is the fear that it may be like the upscaling debacle where developers have to program the ability to upscale in every game since the PS3 lacks a true dedicated hardware scaler but then again they also managed to patch rumble into a lot of games that came out before they brought rumble back. Time will tell I suppose but I really think Sony is trying to make up for everything they had so horribly screwed up at launch.

but the online and play games part of XBL is distinctly inferior to PSN, thanks to Microsoft's refusal to set up dedicated servers and relying on everything peer to peer.


BS...there is just as much lag and latency on a dedicated server as there is on a peer to peer, the difference is on a dedicated server if you get lag, you're sol. Play on a PC on a p2p game and you'll find lag...hit a dedicated server somewhere...and you'll still find lag and latency.

If you're on a peer to peer, you simply find someone with a more favorable connection....or you accept that it could very well be your leg of the connection that has the problem. I have live and I've never, ever had the lag issues that people make YouTube videos about and, naturally, blame Microsoft.

As for the whole $50 a year thing for Live, I dont mind paying it. The price is reasonable for the service I get. Sonys service is still rubbish, its a 'barely functining' online model if you ask me, very much mimicking the PC environment around the year 2000...the lack of integrated dashboard, ability to jump out into the chat envirnment, some games having buggy chat, some having none at all......its just messy, it FEELS free. IF Sony said "you can have a live-like environment for $50 a year", I'd pay them too.

And if you dont think thats coming, think again.....slowly but surely you're going to start to see pay features coming into their online model....a game like WarHawk for example might have free basic play, but if you want to..say...do campaigns or something, they will start charging a fee for that, to offset the cost of maintaining the server and infrastructure.

Also...one other problem with dedicated servers: If the company tightens its purse a little bit, you could literally run out of server space for gamers...another thing you never need worry about with p2p.

I think you can only answer that once in game XMB access comes. We don't know what features it will have or how well it will work. It has been a year and a quarter since it became painfully apparent that it is needed, right?

It seems to me that Microsoft had enough planning and forethought to put all the really useful online features in right up front. They have been there for over 2 years, now. I appreciate that planning. It is what has given us a great gaming experience WAY ahead of every other system out there.

With Sony, it always seems like it is an afterthought, and then they have to make some sort of compromises to get it to work right. For example, do you know if every game is going to work perfectly with in game XMB? Are all existing games going to be compatible with it, or will it only be future games, due to increased OS memory footprint? If it was all in the system when it launched, the programmers would have known what to target in terms of features. Too many questions to call it right now.

I've had my PS3 for a few weeks, now, and I'm just not all that impressed with it. Too many things about it are far too PC like. Pretty nice blu ray player, though. It makes Ratatouille look nice. :)

I always imagined the in-game XMB would be accessed with the Playstation button on the controller. I don't think games would need to do anything extra for that.

XMB isn't here yet though, so who cares right now?

If Sony's past is any indication, actually getting it will be a long time coming (already true), and when we finally do it won't work right for a while. When it's here, we can revisit that argument at that time. Before it was "when PSN launches, why would anyone bother to pay for XBL?". Now it's "when PSN upgrades, why would anyone bother to pay for XBL?". Who knows what it will be next.

What it all comes down to for me is this. For whatever reason, playing games online with the 360 is dozens of times more fun than I've ever had playing games online on any other system (PC included) before and I've been playing games online for 10 years. Even if you pay the full $50/year (which anyone claiming they're savvy by seeing a free alternative shouldn't be paying anyways since 13 month live subscriptions come up for ~$25 several times per year) that is more than worth it to me. Hell, the consoles entry cost is cheaper anyways to fund that some, and the headset comes with the console. But even if it weren't, and even if Live cost 3 times what it cost, It'd still be worth it to me because to me, it is way more than 3x more fun than any alternative I've EVER had.

If, to you, playing games online with the PS3 is just as much or more fun than the 360 then by all means, skip on live. However, to many of us (roughly 10 million it would appear) the alternative is NOT as good, or anywhere near as good. Everyone has their own reasons, but it just isn't as much fun. Whether it be the tightly nit integration, the games, or the fact that the PS3 not coming with a headset means less people online have one, the bottom line is just that it isn't as fun for most of us. If it is for you, then by all means stick with it. To each their own.

It seems to me that Microsoft had enough planning and forethought to put all the really useful online features in right up front. They have been there for over 2 years, now. I appreciate that planning. It is what has given us a great gaming experience WAY ahead of every other system out there.

With Sony, it always seems like it is an afterthought, and then they have to make some sort of compromises to get it to work right. For example, do you know if every game is going to work perfectly with in game XMB? Are all existing games going to be compatible with it, or will it only be future games, due to increased OS memory footprint? If it was all in the system when it launched, the programmers would have known what to target in terms of features. Too many questions to call it right now.


I gottta learn to shut up and just quote you :D
QFT.

With Sony its "Pay Top Dollar Up Front and, someday, we'll deliver all those features you want..eventually..when we figure out how".

They did it with PS3, they did it with PS2 (which took 2 years to hit its stride). Xbox 360 was the first launch in memory since the Atari 2600 and Colecovision that had enough good games coming out for it in year one to consider it a "hit the ground running" kind of launch.

Xbox I'd consider a failure as well because its games the first year or so were pretty bad....but the 360 had plenty of good stuff in the pipeline and some excellent launch software that made people go "holy smokes that looks good".

With Sony I think the PS3 is even worse than the PS2...its taking a loooong time just to put the system at a point where its "up to snuff", IMHO.

I always imagined the in-game XMB would be accessed with the Playstation button on the controller. I don't think games would need to do anything extra for that.

That is just the interface to get to the XMB. What about the programming interface so that the in game XMB and the game itself can interact the way that the Live guide does?

Amen! I would like to see dedicated servers on Live though.

Dedicated servers would be nice. I played quake and Counter-strike for years on the PC and I miss the 20-30 ms latency connection. Plus you take out host advantage which can be huge in some games...cough..gears....cough.

On topic: There was a glitch on original xbox that let you keep playing after your account expired. I used the same account for free for a little over 2 years. I cancelled it though because I was scared of gettin in trouble haha.

Off topic, yet somehow the main discussion: MS is never going to make live free. They can get away with charging $50 as long as they want. Think about it who here is going to cancel your account because it's too expensive? Talk all you want but your not going to do it simply because Live > PSN in every single way and you know it.

So here's what I do to pay for my subscription now. Every time I want to buy some fast food or a worthless cup of coffee I just don't do it. I can pay for my year in about a month.

And another thing. The way I see it it's actually kind of a godsend that Live costs money. Think of how many more annoying 12 year olds would be on live if it was free. It would be 10x worse than it is now. Can you imagine?

If anyone could create a Live account or any number of them without paying, and there were no repercussions for being a complete racist tool, then Live would be a lot worse off.

I'm not sure if this has been said already, but to the OP, if you have an active credit card account set-up on live, than it automatically renews your membership, check your email that you signed up with. It happened to me about a month ago.

If anyone could create a Live account or any number of them without paying, and there were no repercussions for being a complete racist tool, then Live would be a lot worse off.

There are repercussions now? I don't think Live is strict enough.

There are repercussions now? I don't think Live is strict enough.

a friend of mine got a 2 week ban for 6 complaints (in game voice). after that i've started complaining a lot more.

a friend of mine got a 2 week ban for 6 complaints (in game voice). after that i've started complaining a lot more.

You reported your friend...? :D

a friend of mine got a 2 week ban for 6 complaints (in game voice). after that i've started complaining a lot more.

They tell you how many complaints you get?

You reported your friend...? :D

lol, no.... i mean now that i know that there are reprocussions, i report when i see necessary, where as before i assumed that they did nothing, so i never bothered to report.

They tell you how many complaints you get?

i'm not sure exactly what the message/email stated, but he said it mentioned him violating ToS agreements for in game voice, and that 6 infractions were reported in XX amount of time, resulting in a 14-day console suspension (not account suspension, because then they probably would have to refund his money for the 2 weeks live paid :D)

i'm guessing you can have quite a few infractions, but a bunch of infractions in a short period of time will send up a red flag for review.

all speculation based on what he said though.

BS...there is just as much lag and latency on a dedicated server as there is on a peer to peer, the difference is on a dedicated server if you get lag, you're sol. Play on a PC on a p2p game and you'll find lag...hit a dedicated server somewhere...and you'll still find lag and latency.

I didn't even say anything about lag and latency. Obviously, if your connection to the guy hosting the game, be it an actual guy's machine or a server somewhere sucks ass, there will be lag.

What I was talking about was more along the lines of, when I used to play Vegas, any time I tried to get in on a 16-player game the lag would be unbearable. It just wouldn't work. CoD4 works a lot better in this regard, but there are still frequent lag problems in Ground War games. TF2 on Xbox is limited to 16 players rather than 24 on PC.

Whereas, with server based games, I mean I used to play 64 player Battlefield 2 without a problem, 32 player Warhawk, 40 player Resistance, and Resistance 2 will be 60 players. Until Microsoft bends and sets up some dedicated servers you won't have games matching that. Which is fine, obviously people are very happy with Xbox Live. But 64 player BF2 was pretty rad and it'd be cool to get that type of experience on a console.

With Sony, it always seems like it is an afterthought, and then they have to make some sort of compromises to get it to work right. For example, do you know if every game is going to work perfectly with in game XMB? Are all existing games going to be compatible with it, or will it only be future games, due to increased OS memory footprint? If it was all in the system when it launched, the programmers would have known what to target in terms of features. Too many questions to call it right now.

That is why it is taking so long. They have to get it working within the memory footprint they have right now. Obviously Sony is not as skilled in this sort of thing as Microsoft, because Microsoft has been doing this sort of thing for 20+ years. It's a built in advantage for them!

It's not that $50 a year is a huge amount of money, it's that every time it comes time to renew my subscription it seems incredibly inconvenient. Take right now, I want to buy Mass Effect, CoD4 (though I may avoid this so as not to lose my life to it), and R&C. Already a hefty amount of money to spend on those games and right now I can't really swing the money for any new games (poor college kid) and as luck would have it I had to renew Live which is just enough money to eat up the funds to purchase any new games. Then I look over at the PSN and realize "Hey, I get the same thing on this network as I do on Live for free". It's jedimastergrant said, why pay any amount of money for a service when an equally good service is available for free. The only reason I'm sticking around is because I have friends who play only on XBL.

I'm curious, for those with experience with both systems, like myself, what advantage will XBL hold over the PSN once in-game XMB access is here? Because as far as I can tell there's nothing.

Well I know that being in college can cause you to have to pinch pennies. But here's something to think about. I get money once a year for clothing from my job. Since things obviously don't wear out right when I get that money, I just keep the money set aside until I need it. So I would just do the reverse. Every month just set aside $5 for a year.

Now I didn't buy the 360 for XBOX live. I bought it because it had games that I wanted to play. I wouldn't buy the PS3 even it had the greatest online service ever for free. There would have to be some game that I want to play. The great online service provided by Microsoft is a bonus but not a deal sealer for a console.