XBOX Live Users: Paying To Keep Content Exclusive Apparently. Bizarre.

On the XBOX 360, you do. Many people cite the "greater" experience on XBOX Live as the reason for the cost, but the reality is that the services are roughly comparable, with Live offering a few extra bells and whistles.

Microsoft recently increased the price of the XBOX 360's Live membership. In a statement to GamaSutra, Microsoft's Craig Davison explained why.

"In 2002 it was strictly multiplayer gaming. Now we get those Call of Duty map packs before anybody else does. We've got Gears and Halo, of course, as exclusives. We continue to get exclusives on the service as well. And we've gone from 400,000 members in our first year to 25 million."

So XBOX Live users are paying for the privilege to pay for exclusive content? In essence, paying to make PlayStation 3 owners wait for map-packs. Aren't exclusives supposed to give a system more value? The idea of XBOX Live users paying to get access to exclusive content (which in turn has to be bought again) is disgusting. Perhaps Craig was misquoted. We'd hope so.

After all, we aren't aware of Sony running money-making schemes to fund Uncharted 3 and the next God Of War.

Sigh.