NEWS - Monday, October 19, 2009
Xbox Live Price To Rise – Analyst
Speaking in a video interview with GTTV, Pachter said that Microsoft would raise the cost of access to the Xbox 360 online service in a bid to drive profits.
"You can’t hook a guy into Xbox Live Gold if he’s playing on a PC," he said, according to CVG. "That’s the other problem - you really want to hook every gamer who has a 360, you want them to buy all their games on 360, play everything multiplayer, pay you $50 a year so that, in a couple years, it’s $100 bucks a year [£61]. And that’s going up, we all know that ... it’s a profit deal."
A year’s Xbox Live Gold subscription currently carries an RRP of £39.99 in the UK. A Gold subscription to the service - which had over 20 million active members across 26 countries as of May 2009 - is required to play multiplayer games online.
In addition to other existing features, upcoming service updates will introduce Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm and Sky TV functionality to Xbox Live.
Microsoft is currently the only one of the three platform holders to charge for online gaming.
Speaking on the same programme recently, Pachter also suggested that the "iPod touch is the most dangerous thing that ever happened" to game publishers.
Source: http://www.next-gen.biz
