The Payment Walls

I never quite understood it with the 360, and I feared that it might keep happening with the Xbox One.

Some services on Live require an Xbox Live Gold membership to access, which is fine, except when those services are things like Netflix or Hulu Plus - which are accessible everywhere else without a secondary subscription fee.  With the latest announcement concerning Xbox One, things such as Skype (which, might be more excusable if it is indeed the premium service that they charge for anyway) and even the DVR functionality will be placed behind these payment walls as well.

Now, I get that Smart Matchmaking, playing online, and even using their ESPN app makes a ton of sense.  Those are all built right into the Live service; and honestly, I don't even mind paying for their stronger online service.  However, when you are holding back Netflix from being used, how does this help you in any way?  How does this deliver on your message of the "all in one entertainment device"? How does this make me want this system for those features over others if they are unlocked elsewhere? The DVR stuff has yet to be talked about on PS4, but for BOTH of these guys it should be simple.

Let me record right to the hard drive - PS+/Gold to upload it maybe

There shouldn't be any reason why I couldn't record some sweet stuff I did in say, I dunno,a great moment in Battlefield 4 where I crash a helicopter into a building to blow up a team while leaping out at the last second to shoot out the guy in another helicopter and take it over and fly away - or something crazy like that.  Why can't I just record that to my system and have to to show of to buddies when they stop over?  It would kinda suck, but I would be more understanding, if it was locked to the hard drive  and the paid online service would allow me to upload it or something.

At it's simplest thought though - if you take a take out what you get for being on Gold and Playstation+, which system gives you more at it's base level?

Sadly that should be something Microsoft is considering.

However, it's the way it's been and so far there have been no changes, so we shall see.

-Eddie