Microsoft said on Friday that it would increase the price for its Xbox Live Gold membership, prompting threats by some gamers to jump to rival Playstation.
A one-month membership to Xbox Live, required to play games like “Call of Duty” online, increases from $ 10 to $ 11, while a three-month plan increases $ 5 to $ 30.
Users who prefer to buy in bulk are even happier with Microsoft MSFT,
to turn its $ 60-month option into a six-month plan. That means the price of a full year of Xbox Live Gold has effectively doubled from $ 5 a month to $ 10 a month.
Peeved users speculate that the change is part of an effort by Microsoft to get people to sign up for its monthly Xbox Game Pass subscription service, which gives users access to a library of games for $ 10 a month.
“Every few months, the Xbox needs to do something to remind people that it’s not really in touch with players or reality,” said VentureBeat reporter Jeff Grubb. tweeted about the change. “The latest example is $ 120 for a year of Xbox Live Gold (to bully people on Game Pass).”
“Can’t wait to get into debt and sell all my organs just to afford Xbox Live Gold,” said another user wrote.
Other gamers started doing the math on PlayStation’s SNE,
subscription offers, pointing out that 12 months from the Xbox competitor still costs $ 60.
“Not sure what Xbox Live Gold does so much better than PlayStation Network to justify the price gap,” one person said tweeted.
Indeed, the number of users complaining finally got ‘PlayStation’ on Twitter right next to ‘Xbox Live Gold’.
Microsoft defended its move in a blog post, saying that “the price of Xbox Live Gold has not changed for years and in some markets it has not changed for more than ten years.”
“From time to time, we review the value and pricing of our services to reflect changes in local markets and to continue investing in the Xbox community,” the company said.
This article was first published on NYPost.com