Some good news for our gamers out there: Microsoft has dropped the yearly fee of the "Live Gold Subscription Card" to $29.97 yearly (from $49.99). And back in July ‘08 the Live service was made free to PC users.

For those of you out there that think paying for gaming on an Xbox (or any console) is a bit ridiculous, it isn’t. This is a natural progression of gaming where the "replayability" of games these days heavily depends on the ability to play with friends. This is part of the reason why older games like Counter-Strike (where the stats speak for themselves), Starcraft and Diablo II still command a huge audience. Without the team-play ability from the internet, none of these games would be played as much as they are now. The fact you can connect up to the internet and have team-play is a huge attraction.

$30 yearly is a good sweet spot for this type of gaming (i.e. console gaming). It translates to $2.50 monthly and that’s a bargain.

If the subscription cost was a source of concern for you concerning the Xbox console, that’s definitely not the case any longer.