Just in time for the holidays when the US economy is in such bad shape that every penny counts, a one year subscription for Xbox Live Gold is going to be 20% more expensive come November of this year. And with that increase you get the following new features:

• Nada
• Goose Egg
• Nil
• Zilch
• Bupkis
• And best of all, nothing at all!

Now, to be fair, if you’re unhappy with the price hike, as a protest you could always move to the free version, Xbox Live Silver, where you can do everything a Gold account member can - except purchase a lot of premium downloadable content (like lots of new maps or whatever for those online multiplayer games we all love), have access to many retail game demos and betas (many times for those online multiplayer games we all love) and one tiny thing which probably doesn’t affect that many people - play those online multiplayer games we all love.

Now, everyone knows times have been tough lately, and excellent sales of game consoles or the 27 versions of Windows on the market must not be helping Microsoft’s bottom line, so we should all be happy to do our part to help them out and pay 20% more for an abstract service we’ve already been enjoying at a fixed price for over half a decade. That little extra bit might be the kickstart MS needs to thrive and become a really huge and successful company, enough to the point where they might cut us a break in the future.

FIngers crossed!