Originally Posted by Cygnus

Wow, I thought the ppl here would be more educated on networking. The majority of XBL games are peer-to-peer, e.g. *no* servers. For games with 20+ players, there is a need for servers. A central server is used for logging in, email, buddy list, etc, but for gaming its p2p since a broadband connection is more than fast enough to process the data packets for games with 2-16 players. So there really is no need for an annual fee, except for greed of course. I can understand a one-time fee but annual is ridiculous. Take a look at online PC games, they have better online features than XBL and they are free to play online, even for client/server games like Unreal Tournie 2K4. There are millions of online PC gamers, and its free. Notice how M$ does not charge fees for their Internet Game Zone site, except for MMO games of course.