xboxlive

Bad News: Major Nelson announced this morning that subscription costs for Xbox Live for One, Three, and Twelve month terms are going up. Major Nelson, for the uninformed, is the alias of Larry Hyrb, Xbox Live Director of Programming. You can read the details of the pricing here. Basically a one year subscription was $50, will now be $60.

The $50 annual cost has been in effect since 2002 when the service launched

Here is the good news: Price change doesn’t go effective until November 1, 2010. You have plenty of time to renew or go buy a subscription card at the current rate. As a matter of fact, as of the time of this writing, a one year card is a little less than $40 on Amazon. Heck, if you’re already an active subscriber, Microsoft themselves will renew you for $39.99 via a Price Lock Loyalty program.

Before we all go nuts, some things to keep in perspective: The price increase is $0.83 a month, which is far less than inflation. This price change comes into effect 5 years after this generation’s game systems jumped from $50 to $60 priced new games. Nintendo and Sony may offer free alternatives with online play, but it would be hard to argue that Microsoft hasn’t set the standard and has a far more robust service.

Possibly Related Posts