Xbox Live is Microsoft's online service for the Xbox 360. While Sony provides this online servuce for free at the moment for the Playstation 3, Micorsoft has put a MSRP of $49.99 on their online service. Though recently, retialers have been discounting these cards $10-20 off so keep your eyes open for a good deal.
Xbox Live's main function is that it allows you to play the games you bought online, if the feature is included. For instance if you bought Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the single player campaign is only 6-8 hours long. Pretty short for a game that is costing you $60. With Xbox Live, you can now play that game against people all over the world for 100s of hours if you like. In essence, Live can extend the life of a game pretty dramatically.
Another cool feature is the access to Microsoft's Marketplace. Here you can buy Xbox Live Arcade games like Bejeweled, download demos of games released or soon to be released for free, rent/buy movies, buy DLC content for you games, etc.
Also Live has a ton of community features like Facebook, Last.fm, Twitter, friend list and voice chat. Voice chat is great because while playing a game, you can talk to your friend without having to use your cellphone minutes. You do not even need to be playing the same game to chat which is great. Just pick your friend out from friend list and start chatting.
While Live is great, there is a major problem that parents should know. Every game played online has voice chat enabled. This can lead to some players being complete jerks where they will use foul, vile language that is not suitable for kids. I guess some players find it funny to talk like sailors, but it can get very offensive. Now I play mostly Mature rated games so I assume this is not a problem for kid games, but it is an issue that parents need to know. Always be sure to check the ESRB ratings found in front of games before buying.
Live is a great feature that is definitely worth paying for so keep your eyes open for when retailers like Amazon have these cards on sale. See you online.
the product itself was fine i mean it's xbox live, clearly i knew what i was getting.
But it took for freakin EVER to get it even shipped. I don't understand how one stupid card could take like a week and a half to receive.
I bought this card from Amazon for 10 dollars less than I have seen it anywhere else.
"Fast delivery and easy. I highly recommend amazon to firstcomers, it never fails with products"
"Excellent item, very easy to install. Peel the sticket and enter the code it's that easy."
