Microsoft Marketing Man Explains Xbox Live Rate Hike

Andy Chalk

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Nov 12, 2002
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Microsoft Marketing Man Explains Xbox Live Rate Hike


Xbox Live [http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live] Senior Marketing Director Craig Davison says that growing infrastructure, the ongoing influx of new content and the sheer size of its user base left Microsoft with no choice but to jack up the rates for Xbox Live.

Microsoft revealed back in August [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103114-Microsoft-Ups-Price-For-Xbox-Live-Subscription] that the price of Xbox Live would be going up a bit, from $49.99 to $59.99 for a year of service. Ten bucks extra over the course of a year is hardly a deal-breaker but the news, as you might expect, nonetheless stirred up some anger among the ranks of the disaffected button-mashers. As Davison pointed out, however, Microsoft has held the line on Live pricing since it rolled out the service in 2002. That's eight freakin' years, people.

"Back in 2002, we launched at 49 bucks, which works out to about $4.17 a month, and we've held steady for that entire time. Now what we've always been very passionate about is that quality needs to be there, but more importantly, the consistency. So if I'm playing Gamasutra [http://www.amazon.com/Halo-Reach-Xbox-360/dp/B002BSA20M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288713730&sr=8-1].

"As you can imagine, the costs associated with maintaining a service at that level and making sure all of those features are consistent, we're hitting that quality bar, we're adding the customer service infrastructure necessary, we're accommodating all of the same social features and functionality too, there's a cost," he continued. "Infrastructure costs, of course. And we're continuing to bring more and more content."

"Now in 2002, it was strictly multiplayer gaming. Now we get those Call of Duty map packs before anybody else does. We've got Gears and Halo, of course, as exclusives. We continue to get exclusives on the service as well. And we've gone from 400,000 members in our first year to 25 million," he said. "So during that time, we've definitely got to fund it, and we want to add more and more and more. ESPN is a great example. No extra charge for Xbox Live Gold members. But we want to continue to bring that content in. We also want to continue to innovate on all dimensions, whether it's social, entertainment, or gaming. So there you go."

There you go indeed. It's easy to get angry at a company like Microsoft for jacking up its prices, when it's already got a bazillion dollars stashed in its mattress, but the fact is that this stuff costs money. A lot of money. Given that some conventional content providers count the time between rate hikes in months, I think this is one of those rare moments when it's okay for Microsoft to say, hey, we need more money.


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Stabby Joe

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Jul 30, 2008
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I never seem to play online as much, mostly do during the summer period and then I just by a 3 month subscription.
 

kouriichi

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So let us choose what content to want.

Drop Netflix, avatars, music, and all those crappy indie apps.

Theres my $10 differance in price.
 

StriderShinryu

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Dec 8, 2009
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I can understand the price hike, especially given it's rather minute size, but I still feel the best thing for gamers would be to have a lower tier option for multiplayer only. The problem is, while this would be best for gamers it would likely lead to a lot of them showing MS just what they really think of the extra stuff that keeps getting lumped into Gold. MS could offer the lower price MP only tier, but it would just as likely lead to them cannibalizing their own sales.
 

uppitycracker

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Oct 9, 2008
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amusing how, previously, they said it was because they wanted to keep the pricing in line with a new, premium game, which they hadn't done since the original xbox.... now this excuse. sounds like a bunch of excuses to me.
 

rastlin1985

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Sep 16, 2009
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I really cannot understand, at all, how people can complain at the cost of xbox live. Have you seen the price of basically ANY other subsription service? Lovefilm? WoW? Even most magazine subscriptions are more than this! Dont even get started on Sky TV... and i wonder how many of them had no price raises over the last 8 years?

And i think as others have already pointed out, if you don't like it, don't use it.
 

archvile93

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Sep 2, 2009
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It shouldn't even have a price on it to start with. This holds no weight with me.
 

cobrausn

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Dec 10, 2008
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A company wants to make money? Really?

And people are upset about this?

They don't need an excuse to raise the price. If you need an excuse to quit, maybe now you have it.
 

JaredXE

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Apr 1, 2009
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Is he ever going to explain why you need to have Gold in order to see the Netflix account you are already paying for? It's free on the other consoles, why not xbox?
 

The Admiral

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Jul 23, 2008
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Garak73 said:
sheer size of its user base
See this makes no sense, the more customers they have the more each customer must pay. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
In theory, there is a point at which the profits gained from additional users is out weighed by the increase in cost for providing and maintaining the service. Raising the price offsets the cost margin. Although, this school of thought also says that in a free market economy, Microsoft would just stop serving new customers to maintain optimal profit and cost margins.

But I always thought that microeconomics was bull plop anyway.
 

Midniqht

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Jul 10, 2009
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And its *still* cheaper than paying for a damn WoW subscription. I have no problem paying
 

ionveau

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People can defend XBOX all they want, im just going to go play my PC games its only my internet bill and i get free games too what a deal