Arron,

"It's people like you who've paid MS and are happy about it that are shafting the rest of us..."

When xbox live first came out almost 7 years ago it was available as broadband only, for 50 dollars a year, and at a time when broadband penetration wasn't even close to what it is today. It was the only online gaming console at the time so I had no choice but to pay if I wanted to play online. Eventually I had one other choice and that was puchase a PS2, purchase the network adapter, and play online for free against a mix of broadband and dialup users. I'm sorry, I'll pay for a premium service relative to the competition before I ever play online against latent-crazy 56k users.

Now that I've been playing and meeting people over the last near 7 years I'm not going to abandon a community I'm a part of because I have to pay $3.85 a month for online gaming.

So please don't blame me for Sony starting to charge for online services just because I decided to spend 4 bucks a month on an entertainment service that is important to me. That's not even a value meal at Burger King a month I'm giving up to play online and for a quality service. Easiest annual choice I have to make. And the great thing is Arron, if Sony starts charging for online play and you don't want to pay for it? You don't have to.

Sigh...no, not yet. I was at best buy looking at the $299 slim and Demon's Souls and nearly grabbed it. The only problem is I'll have to most likely buy a new TV stand and/or a new TV. I don't have space for a PS3 on my TV stand. It was a hard sell for my wife and she said if we get a new TV stand she gets to get a new coffee table and she would have to approve the TV stand to make sure it matches our living room. So I said forget it lol. One day soon we'll go take a look at TV stands and hopefully then I can grab a PS3. I might just stack my 360 on top of my PS3... ;)

But haven't PS3 users been able to access facebook via the PS3 web browser now for a long time?

As far as your silver/gold account dig, you're right. If Sony can offer this feature as fully fleshed-out or more than the 360's version of facebook it should essentially be free for all live users.

You couldn't lay off could you top?

My SNES was a beast, too. You could smash that thing and it still worked beautifully. I'm not going to try to defend the 360 with its failure rates since I can't defend the fact that whether or not 360's are fixed now or not, they were still released fucked up for the most part and that's pretty inexcusable (MS repairs them for free for the most party so good on them for that).

Over the years there's been some iffy hardware (PS1's only working while they're turned upside down, NES cartridges/cartridge port having to be blown into, do I need to mention the 360?) and there's been some solid ones, too. Let's hope that the RRoD debacle never happens again to any hardware.

I have to agree with you on MW2. I find it more than a little boring, the cookie-cutter shooting-gallery style gameplay just doesn't hold my interest. Ok one level I'm shooting at random windows (some animated some not) in a snowy area, then a forest area, then a slum-like area, rinse repeat. Sorry, other games have held my interest for much longer. It seems (to me) the Activision plague is starting to infect the CoD series as well. Rehash same stale gameplay with new environments, unbalanced multiplayer, and less than stellar B-movie plot line. Moving on...