Gaming Signal: XBox Live Gold or Silver?

XBox Live Gold or Silver?

This may come as a shock to some folks, but when it comes to online gaming on a console, I am a novice. I have never hooked up my Xbox to the network since I always felt that my multiplayer games were best experienced on my PC. But that is all changing with my purchase of a Xbox 360 (which will be described in a later post). So if you read all the marketing hype associated with this device, you will know all about how the console allows you to chat with your friends/enemies and play games against or with each other. This is great since I could now play Gauntlet with all my friends and talk trash without all the hassles of meeting up in person. I mean we all have wives, kids, jobs, and other stuff that makes meeting up something that occurs much later in the evenings. So the way things work, is that I should be able to log on to Xbox Live with my free account (Silver), and purchase the game from the ole XBox Live Marketplace. Once it is downloaded, fire off some messages to my friends and start hearing the cry of "Hero needs food, badly"... But no, I can't since I don't have a Gold level account. <Insert sound of Pac-man dying here>

Now it is not a total loss since I can play at home with my son, but when I want to play a good four player game I am required to purchase a Gold subscription (which runs about $50 for a year.) The thing that drives me batty is that I am paying for the game, I paid for the console, and I am paying for my own bandwidth - what exactly is MS providing in this experience? Are they hosting the games? I don't think so since the game is most likely a peer to peer sort of thing which means even less infrastructure costs. Are they offering me a friend's list and messaging? Yes, but that stuff is covered by the free "Silver" package.

Now, I do know the cost of entry for this upgrade is low - it is less than the price of one game, but it is the principle of the thing for me. Today there is very little differentiation between the levels of membership beyond one having access to multiplayer games and the"advanced matchmaking system". I know that MS is actively working to improve that experience and make having a Gold level account mean something, but right now it feels like a mechanism to leech yet more money out of the consumer for very little value. The only things that were "exclusive" were an early release of the Gears of War trailer which was all over the net long before I actually downloaded it.