Xbox Live Silver Accounts Becoming Second Class 58
Ben Kuchera, at Ars Technica's Opposable Thumbs blog, points out a troubling development on Xbox Live. While paying members of the service (those on the 'Gold' level) have always had more options than those on the free 'Silver' level, Microsoft is now making that gap even wider. From the article: "While the demos and videos are cool, almost everyone I've talked to about the system sees having an Xbox Live Gold Account as an almost required piece of the 360 puzzle. Those with Silver accounts may start to feel the pinch though, as content is starting to be released that can only be viewed with a Gold account. The first thing? The new Gears of War Trailer." Tycho has some choice words on this development as well. "This is really quite a trailer. The term 'trailer' may even be insufficient. But, um... When you make people pony up for instant access to ads? They might get the impression that you are taking advantage of them. I'm just throwing it out."
Trailer? (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally think it'd be better to let silver have access, but I guess it's just Microsoft doing business.
A recipe for poorer service (Score:4, Insightful)
It's really a similar thing to what's going on with "micro" payments for content. You can make the customer pay more if you make him or her believe that the extra money is actually buying something.
As an example, I used to work in a university IT department. The administration came up with this plan that basically pitted the various departments on campus against each other for funds, and we had one particular upper management guy in our IT department who went for that all the way. Everything, in his mind, suddenly got this ability to have value added. Give customers a baseline for free, and then nickel and dime them to death with extra levels of service. A 10 Mb Ethernet port? Free. 100 Mb? That'll cost you.
Invariably, it seems like what you end up with are companies who aren't offering increased levels of service for a small price, but are instead scaling back the basic level so that they can rake in more dough on micro payments without making better or more product. Monthly payments can degenerate to the same kind of deal when there are tiered levels of service, one of them being free. The service provider only has incentive to offer the most basic of features and service for free: just enough to get the customer to see how great the service could be if they paid a little money for it.
I'm not against micro payments or monthly fees on principle. I played WoW for a while, and never begrudged them their $15/mo. I know that it's the way the industry is going. And it's early, yet, so they don't know how to implement it, and we don't entirely know what to expect. But I suspect that when companies like EA push this far enough, and Tiger actually has to stop at the pro shop and buy a box of golf balls using xbox live points before playing, people are going to start pushing back. Hopefully, things will balance out sooner rather than later.
Re:Trailer? (Score:2, Insightful)
After all, this means that you will have to pay in order to see an ad. I don't care what the ad is for - it's still an ad.
Then again, Sony's online plan will require you to pay to download demos - another boneheaded move in my opinion. But perhaps Microsoft is taking the cue from Sony, figuring if Sony can charge for content, why can't Live do the same thing?
Re:A recipe for poorer service (Score:2, Insightful)
Other outlets... (Score:3, Insightful)
The web makes using content as a lure for subscription somewhat irrelevant and thus a bad idea.