I don't know what's the big deal about paying $50 for a year actually for 13 months of live access. That's not even $4 a month for live. I play a lot online and for me it is well worth it.

I don't feel like there are many Live games that warrant that kind of fee to be honest.

I've had a gold membership for a while and besides Chromehounds I can't think of a game that made me happy to pay the gold membership fee. Once my membership runs out I'm going to buy 1 month cards and use them only when I want to play a new game online. (That i rented of course because buying 360 never turns out ot be a good investment for me...)

For $50 a year it is unreasonable to not offer servers. The online games on the 360 are handicapped by needing to use pier to peir connections. So many games offer 4v4 team play or 8 ppl in FFA. I think Halo goes up to 16, COD4 goes up to 18, and I don't think anyone is higher than that.

And new games with a lot of people playing seem to cause havoc on LIVE, COD4 and HALO3 both had lag issues right after release which would be fine on a free network but what the hell are we paying for when you can't even get the games running well even after you had am open beta for BOTH of those games?!

Ending Song on Portal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjGfgV7rJHI