I think not!! You see I don't have a Live gold account on my 360, it might be because I'm a cheap git or that I play the kind of online games that all the little US swear-troll-racist-gay-hating-McHatemonger-bastard-sons-of-bitches (and their friends) tend to be attracted to, so I don't really see the need to pay Micro$$$oft for granting me that privelage....Well that and I really don't have the time to do a lot of online gaming so it isn't really worth my while anyhoo. OK, so you're probably thinking is there a point to this story then and can I skip straight to it? In the words of Keenan and Kel "Awwww here goes!!"
I started thinking about this earlier this evening, I swithched on the 360 to see if the new weelky store update was up yet, it wasn't so I just thought I'd have a root around to see if there was anything interesting and spotted that the new bikes update was out for Burnout Paradise. The sad thing is that it had a little "oh no you don't" sign next to it meaning that at the moment it's only available to gold subscribers. So what? you may say, well the thing is it's a free upgrade/add-on so there's no need for Microsoft to be sticking their noses in. I did some poking around and discovered that it's just a way Micro$$$oft have developed to incentivise their gold memberships, you see gold members (saucy) get the free stuff sooner...hmm that's a bit sh!tty, the game makers decide to release a freebie for all the nice people who bought their game and Micsoshit says "NO YOU DON'T!!".
Luckily for me I bought Burnout Paradise on PS3. It has free online AND they give out the free stuff straight away rather than holding it ransome so I was zipping into oncoming traffic on a motorbike in no time!! Also a game more dear to me, that is Rock Band (Shock! Horror!!) occasionally give out free songs to download but with the way the Xbox live marketplace now works you can't have the freebies on their system until they give you the say-so, or you subscribe to a gold account.
I just find it very strange that with Sony eating into the 360s sales lead that Micro$oft would give consumers another reason to go for the Sony console over their own. Let's look at some examples of the differences between the two consoles and the way things are shaping up.
Price.
360 is cheaper but the PS3 does play Blu-Ray and is a better media server. A similarly specced version of both consoles is around the same price give or take a few quid.
Hardware.
The 360 is about as reliable as Verbal as a police witness (if you haven't watched 'The Usual Suspects' for shame!!!) and it also sounds like a plane taking off. Sadly the PS3 does look like a George Foreman grill.
Online.
360 has a nominal charge but has the better online service (at the moment) though the PS3 is free to play online and is improving all the time. The charge doesn't make too much of a difference right now (it's around £39) but if MMORPGs ever make it big on the console people might balk at paying a subscription for that on top of the Gold account charge.
Microsoft already tried to introduce the Live Gold thing to PC users, said users swiftly told them to go and take a flying self-fornication and Microsoft stopped charging them for a service that they as PC users were used to getting for free.
Well there you go, I have no idea what's going through the Microsoft-monkey brains...They seem to be taking a great foot-hold in the home console market and doing their best to totally flush it. I realise that this is a bit of a weird reason to do a blog post but it just irks me.
Byee :D
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