Derek

I have to agree with a lot of posts in that $50 is cheap. What I haven't seen is that you can definitely make the gold membership practically free. Ever use or hear about the Xbox Live Diamond Card?? http://www.xboxlivediamond.com
If you're a gold member, you can sign up for this card for free and it includes a bunch of great deals.
Personally, I've already made up my subscription price and more just from using the awesome coupon from Quizno's. Buy one sub and 2 regular drinks, get another sub free. Just go to Quizno's 8-10 times and you've made that $50 up. They have tons of other restaurant (both sit down and fast food) deals. As well as a plethora of other stuff (buy cars, vacations, services, etc...). It's totally worth it. It's more than a free gold membership. It pays for itself easily within the year.
And frankly, I think the gold membership should have additional perks to it rather than just online gaming.

And to all those who have said that Nintendo's and Sony's service will be free, did I just read all the articles wrong or are they also charging for content?? I thought retro games on the Wii will cost money. And isn't Sony going to charge for content as well? I remember reading something about Sony displaying actual costs rather than using a point system.

It's interesting to want to bring Live Arcade titles to the retail arena. It seems like it's a bad idea to have a game cost $5 on Xbox Live, but in the retail store for it to be $15 because of the additional associated costs. Instead, maybe they should think about digitally distributing not only through Xbox live, but on the internet as well. Be able to burn a CD with the game, still purchased with MS points (since it's all intergrated with the .NET passport and the whole Windows Live initiative), and then copy the game to your Xbox 360. It of course will still be tied to your profile on the Xbox. There is a need to be able to secure the game though, maybe through some sort of profile/Xbox 360 registration process. Maybe lock the game down to a particular serial number of an 360, or somehow having to register your profile with MS (Maybe create a free Silver account through your PC and tie that to your 360 - just without the constant connectivity.) That info could also be uploaded to your Xbox 360 through a burned CD.

They already do the whole burn a CD thing with backwards compatible games. The technology is there to read from a burned disc in a format that the Xbox 360 can understand, now it's just implementing the copying and security to prevent pirating/sharing of the paid for game.