Xbox Live Silver members must wait for free content

by Dustin Burg on Dec 5th 2007 9:45AM

The release of the Fall Update has brought another "feature" that'll put a very bad taste in Xbox Live Silver members' mouths.

Last night, Major Nelson revealed that starting now, Silver members will get to download free XBLM content one week after Xbox Live Gold members get access. This week long delay in getting free content is justified by Gold members paying for their subscription. And maybe that's how it should be. Gold members actually being treated as if they're getting perks for paying for Xbox Live. Here at X3F, we are Gold subscribers so we guess we're a bit biased and unsympathetic to our Silver brethren. But now that we think about it, it's kind of sad to know that Silver members can't get in on the hot Grunt gamer pic love until next week. Sad stuff indeed ...

Source

Tags: gold, silver, xblm, xbox-live

Reader Comments (54)

I would have to agree with Microsoft's decision on this. I would honestly go as far as having silver wait a month before access to gold content. Yes I am probably pissing people off, but it is just another perk of being a paid member.

That's nothing new ... you had to wait a week for free stuff and demos for almost a year now, only difference since the last dashboard update and the new game store is that you actually see what you're missing, by looking at the red strike through circle instead of not seeing the content at all. Major Nelson more than once posted about a demo release on his blog and told silver members to wait a little longer.

Yeah, it's always been like this. Why are people only noticing this now?

agreed...
most free XBLM content should just be for Gold Members... there needs to be some perks besides playing games online.

Your not getting perks, your taking them away from others.

I agree as well. I don't want to see Silver memebers get less but I'd like to get something extra for my Gold membership. As it stood, I didn't see much difference between a Gold and Silver member.

Yeah we get fuck all else for £40 a year. (But obviously I pay it. What's the point of being online if you can't play against other people?)

But I like the way MS has handled this...
"We need to give more to our Gold memebers."
"Woah. That sounds like it'll eat into the profits."
"OK then let's just take something from the Silver members so the Gold members think they're getting more."
"Bargain!"

I was thinking the same thing...gold members aren't getting more...silver members are just getting less

Nice pic in the article too.

"Ha Haw!"

Obviously not THAT sad then...!

I'm an official silver.

I don't have gold because I don't play online, I've neither the time nor the patience to deal with the kiddies on X-box live (Every game I played online during my trial month was an assault on the ears/mind)

So yeah, no way I'll pay for Gold. Probably ever.

That being said, I don't really have a problem with them delaying some content. It's a perk, of paying for the online service.

I do have a problem with them doing it to content for a game that has no online component, that just strikes me as odd, but again, I can wait a week.

When I'll get pissed is if the release a free for a limited time thing, and say that's Gold members only. (Like the Fighters Stronghold in Oblivion) Then I'll start cheating and using my 48 hour free cards to get gold long enough to Get content, or creating new gamertags.

But as long as it's a week delay, and we don't miss any of the free content, then more power to them.

It seems as though you have to deal with the fact that sometimes paid memberships get things that free ones do not.

The word is "biased". We are biased/we have a bias.

If anything there should be more perks like this for paying up for Gold, maybe a couple of free MS points when you sign up or Gold exclusive free arcade games would be a great benefit. I suppose the demo thing is good tho, even though a good demo hasn't been released for a while and probably wont be until February at least

Xbox Live is pretty damn good because it is a paid service and the Silver members are just free-riding on the paying people for the most part. So if they don't get a perk, is it really worth getting upset over?

Free-riding? WTF are you talking about?
Why should we have to pay at all? Nintendo doesn't charge a fee to use their online service.
Live is forced upon Xbox owners. Every time I start up my 360, it takes my to the xbox live screen. I don't have an internet connection to use with my Xbox, I shouldn't have to.

Yeah, and having a Nintendo Wii, the online experience pretty much sucks, or have you had a lot of fun playing Wii Tennis online? Oh wait...

Sony's online is not much better.

And if I start my Xbox with a disc in the system, it takes me right to the game, so I have no idea why you are getting the dashboard when you start.

Look at all the idiots on Live as it is, I can't even imagine how bad it would be if it were free and people could have 10 gold accounts if they wanted.

Free XBL would RUIN it.

What I'd like to see for gold is a straight across the board 5% discount for all content.

That's a perk that would make Gold a little less arduous to have. Early Demo's are nice, but not giving silvers demos is dumb, because Demos sell games, and while Silvers don't pay for online play we do have to pay to rent/buy our games just like everyone else.

I wholeheartedly agree. A small discount would be nice for gold members and it is counterproductive to not make demos available to everyone as soon as possible.

If there is a demo for a game I am looking at I always play it and occasionally demos steer me to games I would not have originally considered.

I also wish they would put the real dollar cost next to the points so everyone knows how much there actually spending, but I guess the disconnect between points and dollars probably works to their advantage.

I dont know why this is big news but its been like that since before the update, i've gone silver a few times in the last year because i didnt play online as much as i do now and there were times i'd have to wait to download a demo or access GT pics etc.

i hope i wasnt being made to wait because i was silver and a UK gamer because i know MS dont appreciate us brits that much and that would leave me mighty pissed.

It's just ashame that instead of making the gold subscription better they decided to make the silver accounts worse. Not really the best way to keep business.

I also like the idea of having a small discount to Gold subscribers...something like 5% that would only amount to anything if you spent a lot anyway.

"It's just ashame that instead of making the gold subscription better they decided to make the silver accounts worse. Not really the best way to keep business."

Exactly. What's with that?

You all sound like a bunch of idiots. You should never have to pay to play multiplayer online period. 360 multiplayer games are crippled unit you pay that extra $50. I just don't see the added value, its like a money pit. $349 x360 console, $60 a game, $50 live 2007, $50 live 2008, $50 live 2009, $50 live 2010, $50 2011, $50 2012. = $700+ suckers

But by paying Microsoft can give us an online experience way better than it's competitors...I don't mind paying, it's worth it!

"You all sound like a bunch of idiots. You should never have to pay to play multiplayer online period."

Speaking of sounding like an idiot...

And besides, your logic is completely faulty. But I like how you've assembled all kinds of random figures to come up with $700+. You could benefit from BOTH a statistics class AND a logical thinking class.

I agree with the majority of the comments... this announcement does nothing to keep current gold members gold, it only promotes silver members to become gold (if they're impatient). I think there should be gold-only free content, or how about giving customers 400-800 points on their birthday or something if they have an annual membership. This would promote
1. Honest account creation to include the right date, although some users may still include an earlier year
2. Users to sign up for annual memberships
3. Implant a good image of Microsoft in your brain, for associating Xbox with birthday happiness

But on your birthday you'll get loads of cash anyway, to buy things like ms points therefore giving out 400-800 points free would be a wasted opportunity possibly. But , it is only once a year and many Gold users buy ms points regularly anyway.

Thats not fair. The reason Gold members pay is for online play. I can't use that. I don't have high-speed. I need to take my Xbox to my friend's house to download anything. So theres no reason for me to pay a membership fee.
Why does Microsoft have to make people pay to do anything online? Nintendo doesn't.

I suppose that's not too bad. You get what you pay for. It's only a week, so Xbox Live silvers users won't be too disadvantaged, Xbox Live gold members will feel that their 12 month subscription has been worth the money and its also just a little incentive for Xbox live users to upgrade to gold. Not everyone has the money to upgrade to Gold but it's no problem because they'll still get free content.

I don't want to pay for online anything, but in the meantime, what are really the alternatives. Not buying it isn't going to make it go away because millions of people do buy it. My main alternative is to go online with the Wii and frankly I'd rather pay for the 360's service by comparison just because it's used more frequently and isn't so ass backwards.

Plus it's nice to know that I can fire up an old game and play online with a friend even if a server doesn't exist for it... that wasn't true of half the things I wanted to continue playing on PS2 (and seemingly PS3, whenever that comes to pass).

I've never bought a subscription to Live without getting a free game or a free points card or some sort of deal anyway. I've never spent the full amount on just the basic subscription, ever.

My comment here will be the same as I posted on Joystiq:

I can't figure out which upsets me more; paying for the right to get free content a week early or the fact that I pay for a service with ads.

This isn't a special feature to Gold members, and if you think so you're full of it. If Gold was really different it would be Gold service for dedicated game servers and ad free blades. Not a one week window to play a free demo.

Move Silver folks to P2P matchmaking, I'm tired of paying $50 a year for a few demos, ads that block the themes I pay money for, and bad lag.

"This isn't a special feature to Gold members, and if you think so you're full of it."

Right on.

Huh...

I read your post, and the only thing that came across was:

"wah wah wah wah wah...Ima cheap bitch, *sniff* can I now have some cheese with my whine?"

If you don't like it, try out the PSN or Wii online. You get what you pay for. And FFS, the ads on LIve are 99.9% about shit ON LIVE, GAMES, MOVIES, TV SHOWS!

It's not as though you are being forced to watch an add for trojans or, even worse, a "this is living" ad from Sony.

I, personally, love them because usually it lets me know somethings available that I didn't see, or didn't know about.

Lastly, I pay for 5 gold accounts every year, so I'm sure there's enough Gold Members such as me to make up for Silvers such as you. And the lag???? Get yourself a decent connection and/or don't play with people with shitty connections...pretty simple. Then again, you're bitching about paying 40-50 dollars a year for LIVE, I can't imagine you springing anything for a decent broadband connection.

Wow Knight...last time I checked...I'm a Gold member...feel free to check out Xbox.com...my Gamertag is Neon Jebus...

Ass...

There are fanboys and there are idiots...you sir are an idiot.

@Knight Marquise:
Don't start bitching about lag. I can't even get high-speed where I live.
Be damn grateful that you are able to use Live.

This is nothing but artificial 'privilege' for Gold members. I can understand if they give more stuff to Gold members. There should be something to justify their purchase other than online gaming. But to restrict Silver members of FREE content is kind off...bullcrap. Do it for themes and other stuff but not for demos. Maybe it's my PC gaming background...but demos are meant to be free and without any restrictions for anyone and everyone.

A week is too long for popular and anticipated game demos. If it were 2-3 days, then it would have okay. I completely disagree with all the Gold members agreeing with Microsoft's 'decision'. I mean seriously? They are NOT giving you ANYTHING. You are not getting some real benefit or privileges. They are restricting Silvers and thats it. It doesn't make it alright.

^^Following up on my comment...

Maybe it will turn out for the good. Since Gold:Silver member ratio is too high, while Gold members kill each other for some bandwidth on new demos, Silvers can get it without problem in a week's time when everything would have died down.

But it still doesn't make it right. No wonder Microsoft is a hated company. Their work is unethical.

Hey...where are the free downloads they just put out (gamer pictures and themes?) I was looking and couldn't find them!

Haha! Good. We should also get discounts on DLC and silver members have to pay regular price.

If Microsoft really wanted to make Gold accounts worth the subscription they could stop relying on peer-to-peer for their online services and provide some dedicated servers.

Then to really round out the Xbox Live service for everyone you can limit Silver members to peer-to-peer play.

What I don't get is why are commenters and news posters treating this as new? It's not. Most free content has had a one week delay for Silver accounts for a year now. (I'm tempted to say always but I'm not sure I can back that up.) Big deal, so you have to wait a week. At least you get it. All these people posting that this is some sort of 'Crime Against Humanity', why is it such a big deal now that you are reminded of it when you were living just fine with it before?

All Major posted was a _reminder_ that silver gets free content a week later. With the update there are a lot of people signing on who haven't in a while and might not remember that fact. Before, the dashboard would either not show the free content or wouldn't download it without any explanation. All that's really changed is that now the dashboard always shows you everything but tells you if you can't get the free content yet. I imagine having to go through everything and filtering out the free stuff that was not yet available to silver members probably slowed things down and that's probably why they took it out and switched to just warning silver users when they tried to download it.

On the one hand, I see "gold" as paying for the ability to do multiplayer on line, not download a demo "first". On the other hand, silver members, such as myself, are probably not so hardcore that they can't wait an extra week. It won't bother me any to wait. Might even save me a d/l or two if something gets bad reviews during that week.

I'm an ex-Gold Member, but I didn't renew my membership because I didn't have time to really take advantage of the online play. I see that as fair enough - I'm not paying for something I don't need. Just like I don't own a waffle iron because I don't like waffles.

However the week delay just seems bizarre. Gold Membership is about paying to play online. End of story. Why throw in silly litte things like this.

Also, the ePenis waving going on round here and in the Joystiq threads is hysterical. Can't wait until MS releases a Fanboy Maturity feature for the Xbox.

I hate it because I'm currently on silver (no downtime right now with which to justify subscribing), but I still agree with it.

There are two logical benefits. One is that Gold needs to have SOME clear perks, and this one makes sense. The other is that some very desirable demos and other free content cause the servers to get hammered upon release. This will cut down on the number of people able to download it when it first hits, improving their download speeds, and then by the time the Silver members can get it the Gold ones will already be done. Sounds fair.

Why do so many people complain about MS and having to pay for their online service? They built it, they can charge what they want of it. If nobody used it or payed for it, it would go down in cost but at this point it seems like it is going stay this way for a while. It might change once HOME comes out but who knows what that will be like.

Why should they offer this for free? It cost them money to maintain the content on there, cost money for them to develop and test new additions for XBL, it cost them money to work out contracts for content on XBL. I can and will pay for the Gold service because I have 2 brothers in different towns then I live and this connects on Halo or any other game we want to play online.

So until something comes that rivals or is better the XBL on the consoles, expect to have to pay to play online people. That is just the truth.

I'm just noting the would've-been-irony of not being able to get the DLC for the single-player-only BioShock because I wasn't paying for something that was only good for playing multiplayer games.

Instead of complaining, though, I'm going to go use one of those 48 hour trials, because I don't care about Xbox Live for anything else. I'm just a BioShock whore.

I think you need to edit the article, because they didnt just start this. They started doing this over a year ago:

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/10/30/rift-widens-between-silver-and-gold-xbla-memberships/

Seriously, does everyone in the games industry have no memory what so ever?

I think it's ridiculous that MSFT is trying to differentiate the memberships to justify the pricing of gold v silver by restricting current features rather than adding new ones. What have Gold members gained from this new "feature"? Nothing. So what's the point. Taking away something from silver members is not the same as giving something to gold members.

-4 year gold subscriber

Game demos sell games. Why would M$ want to delay any stage of the game buying process?

They have gone insane in Redmond.

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Xbox Live Silver members must wait for free content

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