Pay to Play

I went by the post office today and the latest Official Xbox Magazine is sitting there in its hermetically sealed glory just waiting for me along with an amazing amount of junk mail and bills.  I go home, rip off the plastic covering and take off the stupid ad/ cover and flip through the magazine. Well, what's this? 2old2play is in an article about clans. Cool, although kinda short. Oh well.

Whats this about pay to play?  Some analyst thinks that in the future, games like Modern Warfare will charge a fee to play online. Really? Why?  They didn't make enough millions with the game? Or the map pack add ons?  Basically the theory is people will pay becasue they will have to if they want  to play online. The analyst's attitutde was basically, if you don't like it, to bad. You're going to pay because you won't have a choice. He says Activision is trying to "monetize all of this gameplay". Activision gave a statement  denying that, which of course means yes, they are they just don't want to piss everyone off yet.

The idea is that it would be a subscription system where you pay a fee  each month or annually (like Xbox Live) in order to play online. Theres some real possibility that could happen.  I have  paid for downloadable content like the MW2 map packs, all three Fallout 3 add ons ect. ect. But that has been a purchase of a specific item. A subscription for online play is different.  I pay my annual Xbox Live Gold fee so, basically I'm already paying to play now I have to pay the individual game publishers too?

I think that there will come a time when game publishers will charge an online play fee and when  that happens, I guess I will seriously curtail my online gaming.  I can't afford to pay EA, Activision, Bethesda, Treyarch or whoever individual fees to play online. I will continue to buy the games, play them, then either trade them or sell them.

I enjoy online play but if i had to pay to do it, I proabably wouldn't.