i've been primarily a pc gamer, but i do own about 30 to 50 xbox360 games and i did pay for an Xbox Gold account for 2 years because there was some friends on there that i wanted to play some games with.
anyway, long story short ...i cancelled my Gold account, because to me it wasn't worth the money any more, and in doing so, i had to jump through some hoops to actually make sure it was cancelled and not auto renewed. (had to call in to some call center and wait around for them to turn off auto renewal, only to find out later that they didn't actually turn it off like they said. so i had to call back and go through the whole song and dance again)
anyhow, what kind of amazed me tho, was just how poorly microsoft treat their Silver users. its really quite pathetic ...basically you can't do anything. examples ...i click on a demo and it says i need a Gold account to access it, i click on Youtube and it says i need Gold, i click on UFC and i need Gold. anything that is worth looking at = you need Gold.
so basically the console is pretty useless without Gold ...which really gets me angry at times, because i did drop $300 to $400 on their console/accessories, i did buy a lot of their games ...yet i'm not good enough in their eyes to even watch a fucking Youtube video.
i will never ever buy another microsoft console. its amazing how bastardly cheapass they are on there. just nickle and dimed to death.