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Xbox Live prices Microsoft has announced via Major Nelson that subscription rates for its Xbox Live service are on the rise starting in November for some regions.  The United States, Canada, Mexico, and the United Kingdom will have to pay a little extra for Live Gold plans; a year of Gold in the USA will run you $60 now, for instance.  As you can imagine, there are two opinions regarding this price increase.  On the Microsoft side you have this:

Since launching Xbox LIVE in 2002 we have continually added more content and entertainment experiences for our members, while keeping the price the same. We’re confident that when the new pricing takes effect, an Xbox LIVE Gold membership will continue to offer the best value in the industry.

While on the angry subscriber side, you have incongruous things like this:

wtf!  You don't even give us enough content to justify $50 let alone $60..  glad I'm paid up for the next year and a half...

The price of any service from Xbox Live to cable television to electricity and beyond eventually increases over time, so considering that Live rates have been the same for the last eight years, I suppose it was due for an increase, and an extra ten dollars isn't too terribly much in the grand scheme of things. After all, there are some services out there that can make a ten dollar increase seem like a rounding error.  Still, that doesn't make accepting the news any easier to take in these tough econo... wait a minute.  Isn't this just an extra eighty-three cents per month?  Alright, never mind.  I'm not a fan of price hikes either, but if you're already paying $50 a year for Xbox Live (on top of presumably buying new games several times during that period) and can't come up with an extra $0.83 a month to cover this increase, maybe you should rethink this whole Xbox 360 thing.

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