Originally Posted by Xero (Post 3219821)

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Originally Posted by Kotaku

Xbox Live Gold subscribers might want to renew before November 1, when the price of a yearly subscription to the service jumps $10 in North America.

According to a post on Major Nelson's blog, after eight years' of Xbox Live at the $50 a year price point, the service is finally seeing a price hike. Starting on November 1, a year Gold subscription to Xbox Live will run $59.99, versus the current price of $49.99. One month subscriptions will jump from $7.99 to $9.99, while three month subs will rise from $19.99 to $24.99.

Other regions will be seeing increases as well. In the UK the price of one month will jump from 4.99 GPB to 5.99 GPB. The price of a month in Canada rises a dollar to $9.99. Finally, a year subscription in Mexico rises from 499 to 599 pesos.

Microsoft is running a special deal right now for North American U.S. customers, allowing them to lock in a year at $39.99, $20 less than the new rate. For details, visit the deal website.

Jesse Divnich with industry analyst EEDAR sent out a statement accompanying the news, insuring consumers that $60 is still "an incredible value."

"When originally launched in 2002, a Gold subscription cost the same as an AAA video game, $49.99. When taking into account for inflation ($50 in 2002 is roughly $60 in 2010) and the additional services available to Gold subscribers in 2010, such as ESPN, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Last.fm and Video Kinect, a $10 price increase still represents an incredible value to consumers"

Whether or not $60 a year is an incredible value is ultimately up to consumers. What say you, consumers?

Originally Posted by G (Post 3222438)

Originally Posted by Kane Knight (Post 3222464)

Amazon, newegg, buy.com, and dell frequently discount them. I paid like 32 bucks for my last live card. I'm paid up through like 2012. And the world ends before my subscription does.

Originally Posted by Diesel Mac (Post 3223500)

Yeah I'll probably go thru Amazon when mine is up.

Originally Posted by Kane Knight (Post 3222464)

Amazon, newegg, buy.com, and dell frequently discount them. I paid like 32 bucks for my last live card. I'm paid up through like 2012. And the world ends before my subscription does.

Originally Posted by Penny-Arcade's Tycho

I had a different reaction to the "fightin' words" of THQ's Cory Ledesma than most. I have a different reaction to lots of things, probably. But this in particular.

The idea that THQ is somehow "disrespecting customers" with this kind of rhetoric misunderstands the situation as completely as it is possible to do so. In a literal way, when you purchase a game used, you are not a customer of theirs. If I am purchasing games in order to reward their creators, and to ensure that more of these ingenious contraptions are produced, I honestly can't figure out how buying a used game was any better than piracy. From the perspective of a developer, they are almost certainly synonymous.

It's exceedingly rare that I purchase a game from Gamestop these days. I got tired of being harangued for trying to buy products there, or being told that they didn't have a product when they did, or going across the street to Best Buy or Target or Fred Meyer and finding fifty copies of the game I was trying to buy heaped up like some heathen altar to commerce. There's more, besides. At some point in the last few years, I became incredibly uncomfortable with the used games market.

I don't think Online Codes that gate access to multiplayer are a particularly good idea, just watching the kinds of threads it generates - but that's exactly what Xbox Live does, for every game on the platform. Sony's considering codes as well, but they're getting it coming and going: they've committed themselves to a dedicated server infrastructure for first party titles, and multiplayer is "free," so a used copy of a Resistance or an Uncharted 2 is a worst case scenario. I prefer an approach along the lines of the Flashback Pack for the second Gears of War - something fun and extra, that feels like a reward. More treat than trick.

I traded in games for a long time, there's probably comics somewhere in the archive about it - you can imagine how quickly my cohort and I consume these things. It was sort of like Free Money, and we should have understood from the outset that no such thing exists. You meet one person who creates games for a living, just one, and it becomes very difficult to maintain this virtuous fiction.

Originally Posted by Verbose Minch (Post 3225293)

At least you're finally admitting you're a hypocrite.

Originally Posted by alvarado52 (Post 3225298)

Their only choice is to lower the price

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball (Post 3225317)

Would not matter how low Gamestop or other stores drop used prices since developers and publishers have stated their intent of used games are a type of piracy even though this generation they are able to make some lost money back from DLC, avatar stuff, and collector's editions.

Originally Posted by alvarado52 (Post 3225298)

Their only choice is to lower the price

Originally Posted by Kalyx triaD (Post 3225643)

Perhaps a 'DVD memory used' quota that determines price.

Or is that too much regulation?