$59.99 for XBL? Those fuckers.

Needless to say, I cancelled my Gold account. Principle for me. $50 is already something I'm not thrilled about paying. =/

And damn you Nintendo for lowering the price 3 months AFTER I bought my DSi XL. :(

I set my Gold account to 3 months, I'll let it run out. Not that I play my 360 as much as my other systems anyway.

Mmmm, DSi XL.

Microsoft has a captive audience with Xbox Live -- for every one of you who's read to cancel, I'll bet that droves more exist who are too heavily invested in 360 multiplayer games and online friends to stop paying. They'll just swallow the price increase.

@Rob: They don't even have to swallow the price increase; they can actively ignore it.  Right now you can buy a year for $40.  That's ten dollars LESS than it was before the announced price hike.

Yeah, because Microsoft wants to lock in more players to Live, so they'll pay next year's sub at $60. It's the same concept behind limited-time discounts for cable T.V./phone/internet bundles from telecommunication companies.

Alright.  So if they buy a year at $40 and it comes time to re-subscribe at $60 and they consciously make the decision to pay the extra ten dollars, what's your problem?  The consumer obviously found $60 to be an acceptable price for the services rendered to them.  I'm not seeing a problem... You're not under contract to re-subscribe to Xbox Live after taking advantage of the discount.  Not generally so with cable/dish/DSL; in fact, you have to pay extra to cancel what equates to a legal commitment you made with them.

You're missing the part where when you purchase the $40 sub through Microsoft right now that they set you up with auto-renewal, make [url=http://i.imgur.com/OG703.png]cancelling difficult[/url], and that most users will forget to cancel anyway until they've been charged. No, it's not as bad as Verizon instituting additional fees (the legality of which are under review), but it's still a little shady nonetheless.

But this is besides the point. I see you're adamant in defending Microsoft's price increase -- that's fine. They can do whatever they want. But you can't deny that Microsoft has a captive audience when they feel they're in a position to raise the price of a service that all their competition offers for free.

I'm not really defending much of anything, honestly.  I've cancelled yearlong subs without any honest effort (I was emailed before it was time to renew) and I don't think you can blame Microsoft for consumers forgetting to cancel if that was their wish.  Microsoft doesn't have a captive audience in me; in fact, during those rare months when I actually feel like playing online games, I will buy a three-month subscription, play and be done with gold until the next time I feel like playing online for a bit.

You can't sit inside the cell holding the key and scream that you're a prisoner.  That's not fair.

Point on the services, though.  I agree somewhat.  Isn't Sony making a premium subscription to offer some things that Microsoft offers that PSN does not by default, though?

Sony's PS+ program only offers sales and free games, which you have access to as long as you continue subscribing (again, I feel this creates a captive audience. Stop subscribing and you lose access to all those free games). You can still play multiplayer for free over PSN, which is the primary reason Xbox 360 players pay for a gold subscription.

That's actually one of the reasons PSN appeals to me over XBL.  Playing games online for free's a lot less hassle than keeping a subscription going on Xbox, which is part of the reason that I only buy XBL subs when I know I'll be using them... the PS+'s discounts for DLC and games are also fairly impressive; you don't lose access to the discounted games when you unsub from PS+, do you?  If I were to use PS+, I'd probably sub to save money on whatever deals they had going and simply stop using it after that until they had more offers I was interested in, unless the discounted hardware protection plan offered in the US subscription was something I could use.  That's actually a pretty nice bonus.

I'd actually be interested to see if Microsoft has any plans to bring freebies to their services.  I can't personally justify keeping a sub running simply in case I decide I randomly want to play online for a couple of hours.

You only lose access to free games acquired through PS+ -- I think it's one downloadable PS3 game, one PS1 game, and two Minis per month. Sony decides what you get.

Anything purchased through a sale is your's to keep, I presume.