Looking forward to being able to check your Facebook and Twitter from the comfort of your couch on an Xbox 360? Better cough up those credit card numbers. Hidden away in the press release announcing the most recent changes to pricing for the Xbox 360 Elite console is confirmation that the Twitter and Facebook applications coming to the Live platform in the fall update will require Gold membership. The information is tucked in a footnote, which reads:
Xbox LIVE Gold Membership will be required for Twitter and Facebook when they are available, and is required for Netflix. Games, media content and Netflix membership are sold separately; a hard drive is required for storage.
By now, it should probably come as no surprise that the features are only available to paying members. Expecting Microsoft to give you something you might actually want for free is on the level of believing in the Tooth Fairy. If you wanted to find a bright spot in it, at least they didn’t give the feature to everyone only to lock it up for paying customers a few months later. It’s nice to see them adding value to the Gold subscription instead of simply taking it away from Silver users as they’ve done in the past.
