Rumor Mill – XBL Silver Allowing Free Online Play?
OK, this is very hard to prove right now as there’s a Live Weekend going on right now. (meaning you can play online for free on Xbox Live anyway). But a dood named Jacob, a Silver level gamer, says that he’s been playing cross-platform multiplayer games for free since Wednesday night – which of course precedes the Live Weekend. We checked in on his Gamercard and, yup, he was playing Shadowrun online on Thursday.
Apparently, it seems that by ending the gold/silver distinction in Games for Windows Live might have had the same effect for those who game on titles that are both PC and the 360. For example, A commenter on Xbox Live forums found that Shadowrun online play was free. Halos-Finest reader Jacob, says it also works for Lost Planet: Extreme Condition Colonies Edition and Universe at War: Earth Assault too.
There’s not much we can do until the weekend ends, so don’t get your hopes up just yet. But could this mean that Xbox Live may eventually convert to a free model for all multiplayer gaming too?
Here’s the forum post that’s starting all this crazyness.
July 28th, 2008 at 3:35 am
What will happen to all that money I just invested?
July 28th, 2008 at 4:37 am
That would be really nice! I hardly use Live, but still pay for it each month out of convenience – it doesn’t seem like much, but that $10 or so a month certainly adds up.
What would be interesting is how they would phase Gold level out though… credit those that already had months left of credit from the year purchases? I find that hard to believe.
More likely they’re just trying to snag more subscribers to Gold, and the Wednesday deal is a glitch.
July 28th, 2008 at 6:22 am
That’s Seriously crap!!! I just bought a new 13 month subscription last week…
July 28th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Hmm, I can see both sides on this:
On the one hand, Microsoft will be missing out on $60 a year multiplied by what, 15 million Gold members?
That’s a freggin lot of money.
ON the other hand, with PSN improving and the kinda coming release of Home, they maybe need to get a bigger advantage. Because if you want to play online for 3 years, a PS3 is much cheaper in the long run.
Maybe they figure they’ll claw back some folks on the fence, or give people more reason to choose 360 on multi-format releases. It’d make sense to judge people’s reaction to stuff like this considering how much they’ve risked already on the Xbox brand.
hmm, I still say it’s false, but who knows?