Gamers threaten to defect from PlayStation after Xbox Live price hike



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Microsoft said on Friday it would increase the price of its Xbox Live Gold subscriptions – prompting threats from some gamers to step off ship to compete with Playstation.

One month Xbox Live subscription, which is required to play games like “Call of Duty” online, drops from $ 10 to $ 11, while three-month plan drops from $ 5 to $ 30 .

Users who prefer to buy in bulk are even more unlucky, with Microsoft MSFT,
+ 0.44%
turn his 12 month, $ 60 option into a 6 month plan. This means that the price of a full year of Xbox Live Gold has effectively doubled from $ 5 per month to $ 10 per month.

Peeved users speculated that the change was part of Microsoft’s effort to get people to sign up for its Xbox Game Pass monthly subscription service, which gives users access to a library of games for $ 10 per month.

“Every few months the Xbox has to do something to remind people that it’s not really in touch with gamers or reality,” said Jeff Grubb, reporter for VentureBeat. tweeted about the change. “$ 120 for a year of Xbox Live Gold (to intimidate people on Game Pass) is the latest example.”

“I can’t wait to get into debt and sell all my organs just to get Xbox Live Gold,” another user wrote.

Other players have started doing the math on PlayStation’s SNE,
-1.40%
subscription offers, pointing out that rival Xbox’s 12 months still cost $ 60.

“I don’t know what Xbox Live Gold does so much better than PlayStation Network to justify this price difference,” one person tweeted.

Indeed, the number of complaining users ultimately got the trend of “PlayStation” on Twitter alongside “Xbox Live Gold”.

In a blog post, Microsoft defended its decision, saying that “the price of Xbox Live Gold hasn’t changed in years and in some markets it hasn’t changed for over 10 years.”

“Periodically, we evaluate the value and price of our services to reflect changes in regional markets and to continue to invest in the Xbox community,” the company said.

This article first appeared on NYPost.com



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