Xbox Live Gold subscribers might want to renew before November 1, when the price of a yearly subscription to the service jumps $US10 in North America.
According to a post on Major Nelson’s blog, after eight years of Xbox Live at the $US50 a year price point, the service is finally seeing a price hike. Starting on November 1, a one-year Gold subscription to Xbox Live will run $US59.99, versus the current price of $US49.99. One-month subscriptions will jump from $US7.99 to $US9.99, while three-month subs will rise from $US19.99 to $US24.99.
Other regions will be seeing increases as well. In the UK, the price of one month will jump from £4.99 to £5.99. The price of a month in Canada rises a dollar to $US9.99. Finally, a one-year subscription in Mexico rises from 499 to 599 pesos.
Microsoft is running a special deal right now for North American customers, allowing them to lock in a year at $US39.99, $US20 less than the new rate. For details, visit the deal website.
Jesse Divnich, with industry analyst EEDAR, sent out a statement accompanying the news, insuring consumers that $US60 is still “incredible value”.
“When originally launched in 2002, a Gold subscription cost the same as an AAA video game, $US49.99. When taking into account for inflation ($US50 in 2002 is roughly $US60 in 2010) and the additional services available to Gold subscribers in 2010, such as ESPN, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Last.fm and Video Kinect, a $US10 price increase still represents an incredible value to consumers.”
Whether or not $US60 a year is an incredible value is ultimately up to consumers. What say you, consumers?
Price change for Xbox LIVE Gold subscription [Major Nelson]
Republished from Kotaku.
DK_Son
Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at 7:39 AMSo for once Aus isn’t getting screwed over?
simon
Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at 7:57 AMits important that microsoft cover their costs of hosting games on xbox players own connections and bandwidth. it saves them millions each year to ensure a quality service on lag ridden adsl1 hosts of up to 16 players. thank you microsoft.
Normandy
Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at 9:17 AMAgree simon, this fricken peer to peer hosting for xbox games is bull. How about local based server games, not peer to peer bull MS!?
Ha
Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 6:18 PMIsn’t that up to the developers/producers?