Everyone loves to have a good rant, afterall the actual description of a rant is a poorly researched argument that directly attacks an idea, person or institution and usually often contains few proven facts. Now while I'd like to think that my personal rants have a little more honest truth based within them, I'm as guilty as anyone of letting my anger and general stupidity get in the way of explaining something I'm meaning to explain clearly. So it's with this in mind that I decided to have another little rant today, but hopefully this one will be a much better structured rant concerning my more recent concerns with Xbox LIVE, the popular gaming service for Microsoft's Xbox 360 videogame console. Now like all good discussions or arguements, you may or may not agree with everything I say. But I think this subject is worthy of discussing. 

My frustration lies with the recent media talk of full blown adverts hitting the Xbox 360's dashboard, now I don't mind videogame related adverts being placed on my dashboard as I usually find them of interest, if say it's an advert for the newest exciting piece of downloadable content I totally forgot was going to be released or some link to a trailer I might be interested in. I honestly don't mind that at all and it provides some life to the dashboard, but what does concern me is Microsoft's push to place much bigger and more intruding ads for products that aren't game or movie related at all. Now this hasn't happened to any great degree yet, at least not in the UK but there are clearly plans to do so in the near future. These adverts won't just be simple still images either as Kotaku showed one of the potential adverts being in full motion video on the Xbox 360 dashboard, sound and all.

Now to be fair my frustration doesn't just lie with adverts making their appearance on my Xbox 360 dashboard, but Xbox Live in general. There are many gamers who will tell you that paying the £35 a year subscription fee for Xbox Live is a damn good deal, and maybe in some respects that's true. But I also can't help but compare it to the Playstation Network and while PSN isn't as well developed or generally as entertaining as XBL, I still find that it provides the exact same solid performances and general online services as Microsoft's online offerings and of course that's free. I don't wish to be to hard on Xbox Live as I do enjoy it, but I have found myself questioning the yearly subscription fee, now it's only recently that us Gold Members have truly seen our yearly sub get put to use with brand new features to the dashboard such as the recently launched 1 vs 100.

The Playstation Network is a rather interesting online service, while it is indeed free and as taken sometime to truly get up and running. It still does what a gamer wants an online service to do, and in my own personal opinion provides Sony with a tick against Microsoft when comparing the two consoles. But I'm not going to do that as it's something I hate, but the lack of true new addition to the PSN is understandable and maybe I would even be willing to pay for that service if say Sony were willing to offer the same amount of online content as Microsoft. But I get the feeling that Sony are happy with the way things are and the features they have added, are honestly either quite experimental or of actual interest such as the recent VidZone. But I shall admit to being quite the fan of Inside Xbox of the UK, I think they provide great entertainment online and it's one of the areas that make paying the yearly fee a tiny bit more worth it. But the idea of having to pay 35 sterling pounds a year and also have to suffer adverts from the likes of Pizza Hut or Burger King, well that does not settle well with this Xbox Live Gold member and I suspect I'm probably not the only one.

There are of course other factors to take into account, for one this new push towards having larger more impacting adverts on the dashboard might only affect those gamers with silver accounts and in some respects that would be more accepting. It could be a feature of the dashboard that could be turned off if you had a gold membership or maybe Microsoft are looking to change the yearly or monthly subscription as a whole. There as been some recent rumours of Microsoft's wish to ditch the 12 month Xbox Live Gold membership cards, a rumour I honestly hope is not true. Mostly because in the UK, Xbox Live only supports a few different types of cards, we don't all own shiney mastercards as there are many lesser known cards in use. But back to the point at hand, I fully expect Microsoft to make some changes to the way we pay for Xbox Live soon. In what shape or form this takes we'll have to wait and see. But it could have an impact on the way they decide to place adverts on our dashboards. 

Overall this blog hasn't exactly been a rant on why I am paying for Xbox Live, it's been more of a concern with what Microsoft might eventually turn Xbox Live into. It does concern me and while I do indeed enjoy newer features like 1 vs 100 and upcoming additions such as Last.FM, I do greatly worry of what price we gamers will eventually have to pay for such features. Yes we pay a good amount each year for Xbox Live, but I know I'm not the only gamer who feels that Microsoft wants more off us and they'll do what they can to earn even higher revenues. In some odd respects that's an understandable decision, but when it starts to affect the general image of the console itself. Then some serious questions need to be asked. I do hope they reconsider adverts being placed on the dashboard of every Xbox 360 owner around the world and if it is to be done, then at least do it with a bit more taste. There are many ways this could be done and I shan't go into them now but I also hope that I'm not the only one who wishes for adverts on Xbox Live to be built up with us gamers in mind.

What do you think of full blown adverts making an appearance on Xbox Live?