Players Will Be Required to Pay for Xbox One Features

Xbox One console

Was there ever any doubt that Microsoft would go this route?  Not in my mind.  Why?  Simple, because they already do this.  A story reported on today from BBC News mentions that the Xbox One will require the user/player to subscribe to a Live Gold account in order to utilize some functions of the new Xbox One.  Is this really that much of a change?  Nope.

Long story short, here is the deal.  In order to use the following functions, players must be an Xbox Live Gold account subscriber.  Items marked *Currently Required indicates Xbox 360 features that currenly requires a Gold subscriptions well.

-Multiplayer Gaming *Currently Required
-Netflix (or other video streaming services) *Currently Required
-Matchmaking for Online Games (considered a function of online play) *Currently Required
-OneGuide (think of a recommendation service for online media content)
-Access to communicate via Skype.

I don't particularly see anything worthy of arguing about int his list.  As it stands, it doesn't appear that all that much will change between current Live Gold accounts and current-gen Live Gold accounts.  This doesn't mean that changes will not pop up elsewhere, it just means there isn't a whole lot that us current-gen gamers can argue about.

And with Sony also starting to charge for online access and similar features on the PS4, there goes the excuse that paying for online on an Xbox console is more expensive.  Looks like we're all on a level playing field now.  Like it or not.